Into the West
by Walks with Scissors
Summary: An original story running parallel to The Stand. An evil from across the many worlds has dark plans for a world decimated by the Superflu. Together, several survivors must stand against it or watch what remains of their world crumble into darkness.
1. Chapter 1 June 19th

(Author's notes on this story are on my home page)

**I**

"Just a little closer" Derek mumbled around the flashlight caught between his teeth.

Only the bottom half of the young man's body was completely visible, the other half was mostly swallowed up, consumed by the engine compartment of the small aircraft he was working on. With a ratchet in one hand and a bolt in the other, he struggled to replace the last of the mountings holding the brand new alternator inside his small Cessna. His entire body seesawed on the fuselage of the aircraft, his toes only occasionally touching the top step of the wooden stepladder he was using for his repairs.

He finally managed to work the bolt into the mounting hole, causing him to grin around the flashlight protruding from his lips. Fitting the ratchet down over it, Derek slowly drove the bolt into its receptor, making quick movements back and forth as he worked the tool in the tight confines that the engine compartment allowed him.

It seemed though, every time he started ratcheting the bolt in, it would start crooked and he would have to back it out again. He frowned; beads of sweat were starting to form on his forehead as the exertion was taking a toll on him, the exertion and his inability to breathe properly in such a contorted position. He shifted forward, his heels coming up to behind his knees as he tried to get as close as he could to where he was working.

An older gentleman was watching all of this with a bemused smile on his face while leaning against the wide doorway of the sizable hangar. Floyd Wilks watched his son working on his plane, just as he had done when he was the same age. The number of years since that time was apparent in the lines on his face and the color of his hair; salt and pepper not all that long ago that had now gone way to mostly salt.

Floyd was terribly proud of the kid, now grunting and working his feet back and forth, all adding to the illusion that a carnivorous airplane was consuming him. He and his wife had their only child late in life, Floyd himself now being almost sixty-five. He saw things coming full circle for him; now long retired he watched his son grow into a man with the same love for aviation that he did, his son in his last few weeks before he would ship out to start basic training in the Air Force.

He wondered if Derek would enjoy the same long military career that he himself had, or would he just stay his six years and leave. It didn't matter all that much to Floyd, he just hoped that his son would be happy with his choice to follow in his footsteps. Either way, Floyd would be content.

Indeed, if there were any regrets that he had it was that Floyd and his late wife, Tabitha, only had a single child before Tab's untimely death from breast cancer when Derek was four years old. Possibly one other; Floyd was terrified of his long slow descent into old age that would occur once his son was out of the house, leaving him alone – the house's sole inhabitant for the first time in almost forty years.

A loud whoop of delight broke Floyd out of his revelry as his son successfully ratcheted that last bolt into place and immediately began extricating himself from the confines of the Cessna 182's engine compartment. Derek swung his feet back down, trying to use them as leverage as he pulled his upper half up and out of the plane. Too late though, he realized that both his feet were on the end of the ladder which immediately toppled from the instability.

Derek clawed at the aircraft but found his hands only grasping at air as he fell. In his mind, the five feet to the ground passed by in slow motion as he suddenly found himself face first on the concrete floor of the hangar, the smell of oil and dust in his nose that was now flattened against the unforgiving cement slab. He groaned as he rolled over to find his father right above him, grinning madly.

"One day you're going to break your neck, boy." Floyd Wilks said, extending his hand out for his son.

Derek groaned as he was helped to his feet, rubbing his now-throbbing forehead. He reached down and picked the stepladder up, folding it before gently leaning it against the fuselage of the aircraft. He felt his father's eyes on him as he went about closing and locking down the engine compartment on his plane.

Finally finished and satisfied that all was in order, Derek looked back over at his father. "I thought you were headed back home to start dinner?" He asked.

Floyd's big grin returned, sometimes that grin reminded Derek of the Cheshire Cat; illogically, he kept expecting that the rest of Floyd Wilks would simply fade into non-existence leaving only the grin behind in his place. The grin was his father's trademark and Derek, in his approaching adulthood, conveniently ignored the fact that he had that same hereditary smile.

Just when Derek was sure that the question was going to go unanswered, the grin faded a little, revealing a little bit of the anxiety and creeping loneliness that was behind it. "I don't know. I just figured that I would wait for you to finish up here and we could drive back into town together."

"What about my car?" Derek asked. "How am I going to get back here tomorrow?"

Floyd just waved his hand, dismissing the question. "Don't worry about it, I will bring you on back tomorrow. In the meantime, the car will be just fine, nobody is going to steal it."

That was certainly the truth. Derek drove a rolling trash-heap of a car; the old '82 Takuro Spirit had seen it's share of action. At times it seemed like it was one big rolling pile of Bondo and salvaged parts. This was fairly typical of Derek, he would rather have something old and falling apart that he could tinker with than something brand new that requires no work on his part to keep it functioning.

Derek finally smiled and nodded his acquiescence. Deep down he sensed that his father was having a far harder time accepting his looming departure for his own career and whatever was lying beyond than what he was really letting on. So he took whatever chance he had to spend extra time with his father, and true to form, neither of them really talked about it.

Sitting inside the big Cadillac that was a huge contrast from his own car, Derek stared out the side window. He watched his own reflection superimposed on the scenery as is rolled silently past. The trees in Kent, Ohio were a dark and vivid green; the sign that spring had given up its last breaths as summer had stepped in to take its place. The day itself was warm. Warm and humid, not a good sign this early in the season; it almost assuredly meant that it would be absolutely unbearable come mid-summer.

Both father and son rode on toward home in an almost uncomfortable silence, but it was Floyd that first decided to break it. " What does Amanda think of you going on into the Air Force next month?" Floyd asked.

Derek shrugged, an action that looked much more self-conscious than he would have liked it to. "I don't know dad. Her and I just haven't been getting along too well these last few weeks. I know that she doesn't want me to go, but I guess I just figured she'd be a little bit more understanding about it."

Derek sighed and shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't know dad. I remember one day when I was certain that Amanda and I would get married, you know?"

Floyd knew. His son and his next-door neighbor's daughter had been inseparable as children and that friendship had flourished into their teenage years where they spent their entire high school existence romantically involved. But now, just as spring has passed on into summer, the two kids (Floyd did and probably always would think of them as kids) were starting to pass away into a sobering and unforgivingly realistic early adulthood, just as casually and inevitably as the seasons changed.

Time is unforgiving, this Floyd knew. He could see the childhood of his son zip by him like a movie played at double or triple speed. And here at the end he felt cheated. No matter how much he tried to make each moment leading up until now count, it didn't prevent it from being over.

"I know." Floyd finally said. "The only thing that I can tell you is…just do whatever will make you happy. That girl's got a good head on her shoulders, and so do you. If it's meant to be, the two of you will figure out a way to make it work."

Derek didn't reply, but instead kept looking out the window at the encroaching summertime.

The evening passed in a companionable silence. The two cooked dinner on the grill outside, a couple of mammoth sirloin steaks grilled medium rare, and then ate outside in the fading daylight. They didn't speak any more of the future, but only about the inconsequential; the weather and the summertime, and whether old mister Harmon across the street would stay in the house after his wife had died a few weeks past.

Their conversation circled in, as always, on aviation and soaring in a clear blue sky.

Derek Wilks certainly took after his father, and his grandfather for that matter, when it came to his love of flying. Floyd had his son in a cockpit ever since he was barely old enough to walk. Derek could fly a plane before he could drive a car, or even ride a bike for that matter. And here at seventeen years old, he had already had his pilot's license for a couple years now.

Floyd had related to Derek, as he already had a dozen times by now, his plans to fly south and explore the Caribbean islands for a few months after his son had gone to the military. He would never do this, Derek knew, because there were literally hundreds of grand aspirations that his father had always talked about doing and yet never really got around to. No, he was certain; Floyd would simply remain in the house and think of all the things that he should be doing and yet never get the initiative, or the courage, to get out and do.

This bothered Derek, but he could not and would not allow his father's depression and loneliness to prevent him from getting started with his life. And even if he wanted to, there was no way his father would ever allow him to.

Their silence was finally broken near the end of their meal as a young blond woman came around the house into the back yard and encircled her arms around Derek, giving him a kiss on the cheek. Floyd stood up and began gathering dishes, busying himself as his son's long time girlfriend arrived.

"I'm going to head on in and clean up." He said, giving a knowing smile and an imperceptible wink to Amanda as he went inside.

**II**

Floyd sat in his armchair, doing the crossword puzzle out of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and only peripherally listening to the eleven o'clock news as he heard the back screen door slam shut. Derek had been outside with Amanda for over four hours. Floyd had seen them out the kitchen window as he was doing the dishes; at first they seemed angry and standoffish with each other but by the time he turned off the light and headed to the living room, all appeared to be well as they stood in the back yard, embracing each other. All appeared well and Floyd very much hoped that it was, he had known Amanda and her parents for a long time and he didn't want to see the girl get hurt.

His son came in and sat down on the couch, putting his feet up on the table as he became engrossed with what was on the news. Floyd watched him for a few minutes before his curiosity finally got the better of him. "Everything okay?" He asked.

"Shh dad, I'm listening to this." Derek said, causing Floyd to direct his attention to the television set.

The news was reporting a quarantine of some pissant town in Texas; a talking head from the CDC was busily feeding a press conference their daily dose of the "don't worries". The story peaked his interest somewhat, he had recalled a few times in the past that quarantines had been imposed, but not within the last few decades. And definitely not in the generation of television news jackals that will tell you anything you could possibly want to know, as long as it involves death and/or tragedy.

Floyd waited for the story to be over so he could find out the news that he was genuinely interested in. And finally, as the news went to commercial, Derek turned back around to look at his father.

"Is everything okay?" Floyd said, reiterating the question.

Derek smiled and shrugged "Everything's fine, why do you ask?"

This always aggravated Floyd, his son knew damn well what he wanted to know, but was going to force him to unearth each little piece of information like a dentist pulling teeth.

"What's happening with you and your honey?" Floyd finally asked.

"Oh, I think we are going to be okay." Derek said, refocusing his attention to the television.

Floyd nodded, still not happy with the clarity of the information being communicated by his only son. "Really, so she's going to be okay with you being away for a while?"

"Nah, one better than that." Derek said, not turning away from the television, not allowing his father to see the smile on his face. "She's going to marry me."

The elder Wilks opened his mouth, closed it, the opened it again as his son turned to face him, smiling; it gave him the rather comical expression of a fish on dry land trying in vain to draw in oxygen. Finally he managed to regain enough composure to talk in a strangled voice about one octave high than his normal boom. "Boy, are you telling me that you two have been out there for four hours making wedding plans and neither one of you bothered to come in here and tell me about it?" He asked, incredulously.

Derek laughed and shook his head. "Nah, dad. We have only been making plans for about the last three hours, it took me the first hour or so to get up the nerve to ask her. And…" Derek added, grinning mischievously "…to make sure that you weren't at the window watching us when I gave her the ring."

Floyd tried to search for something to say, finally what came out seemed dazed, almost stupid to his ears. "And she said yes?" he asked.

"Yeah dad" Derek replied patiently "she said yes."

The older man just sat in his chair, staring at but not really watching the television, trying to process all of the new information that he suddenly found himself assaulted with. An idea suddenly occurred to him: "Amanda isn't pregnant is she?" Floyd asked, suspiciously.

Derek flushed, rolling his eyes. "No dad, she's not pregnant."

Nodding, Floyd smiled. "Why don't you tell Amanda to come on out here, I want to congratulate her."

Derek looked both shocked and uncomprehending at the same time. "How did you know…" He mouth, barely making a noise.

"Don't you think that I know every single creak of the floorboards in this old house? You thinkI don't know when someone is standing in the dining room?" Floyd said. He was obviously relishing the revenge he was getting on his son for putting one over on him like that.

However, before Derek had a chance to reply, Amanda came out from the dining room, smiling meekly with her hands folded in front of her. She looked immediately both nervous and apologetic.

Floyd stood up, smiling at the blossoming young woman who he had known since she barely came up to his waist. "Come on over here sweetheart" he said, holding his arms open for her.

The girl came over and he hugged her tightly, she readily returned the hug. "I'm really happy for both of you" Floyd said, smiling at his son over the shoulder of his soon to be daughter-in-law.

Lying in bed that night, Floyd found that no matter what he did, sleep was simply not going to come to him. He was alone in the house, he had heard his son slip out the back door a few hours earlier; the boy was good at knowing the right places to step to keep the floor from squeaking, but not so good that he didn't slip up at least once on his way out. There wasn't really any doubt where Derek had gone. He was obviously next-door at Amanda's house, her parents being out of the state on vacation of a couple weeks.

He stared out the curtainless window, the moonlight streaming in and illuminating a large misshapen trapezoid right in the middle of his bed. Floyd was far more permissive with the kids seeing each other whenever they wanted to than Amanda's own parents were. He knew that they had been sexually active with each other since about the time they were fifteen and while he had, at the time, been somewhat angry about it; there really wasn't any point in making their lives difficult after the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.

Stupid decisions were a hallmark of youth, of this Floyd was certain, even though his own youth was now far behind him. However, Derek was far more responsible in his own youth than he had ever been, this is why Floyd very rarely gave him grief for any but the most serious of transgressions. This was not to say that Floyd felt that his son being engaged to Amanda was a bad idea, quite the opposite. Floyd felt that the young lady next door was the most perfect girl for Derek; he would even go so far as saying "soul mates".

The Turner family had moved into the house next door when both their daughter and Derek were six years old. They had invited the two of them over to a barbecue the following weekend. Floyd very clearly remembered the slight, tiny blond girl cannonball into the aboveground pool; her narrow frame sending up pitiful splashes of water. Derek timidly went to go say hello to her, and they had been best friends from that day forward.

Times had not been perfect for them ever since. Both had to endure their own snares and pitfalls of adolescence and puberty. Floyd could recall mediating no small number of petty squabbles between the two of them; but against the odds, both of them came out on the other side intact.

Life was good for right this moment, tomorrow will tend to itself. This was Floyd's last, resolute thought as he got out of bed and walked downstairs to make coffee.


	2. Chapter 2 June 20th

The morning sunlight glinted off the surface of the pond, giving it the appearance of an immense pool of molten copper. The illusion was only broken by a flat river rock skipping several times across the surface of the water, leaving widening concentric circles on it's surface spreading out and away from the impacts. Just as the calm would almost return to the pond; another stone would go skipping across it, then another, and another.

Sitting beside a stand of reeds at the side of the pond was a young man, barely a couple years into his teens, cross-legged at the edge of the water with a considerable pile of skipping stones gathered beside him. Pratt Lake was really only a lake by name. The same effect could easily have been gained by gathering a couple dozen family swimming pools around each other. Occasionally, if there was an extremely hot or dry summer, the lake might disappear completely for between a few days and a few months.

In fact, the only real saving grace to this little pool on the outskirts of Pratt, Tennessee is that it made a pretty damn good swimming hole. The town itself was off in the middle of nowhere, underneath the shadow of the Smoky Mountains. This mountain in particular was known affectionately to the local residents as Little Bear Peak. Only a single road led into or out of the town, with a fifteen-mile trip to the larger town of Kingston.

Only thirty or so houses made up the little town of Pratt and aside from a single old gas station, you had to drive out of town to get anything. This is probably why the lake was so popular amongst the teenagers living in town. Its seclusion made it an excellent place to be drunk, intimate or basically do anything where the interference of parents was deemed inconvenient. Conversely, if parents wanted to go make sure that their kids weren't doing anything that they weren't supposed to be, they eventually found their way down to Pratt Lake.

However, this morning only a single teenager was down along the shores of the pond. Andrew Verner wouldn't have it any other way, he tended to stay away from this place when anyone else was around, preferring to come down here to daydream and skip stones across the water's surface. Partially he did this because he enjoyed the seclusion; partially he did this because he really just didn't have any friend here in Pratt.

While he did have a few friends at the high school in Kingston, he was generally an outcast here at his home. Aside from his shyness, he didn't understand why everyone seemed to dislike him so much, he went to great pains to make sure that he didn't look any different or stand out any more or less than anyone else. He had even gone to the extent of getting rid of his glasses in favor of contact lenses, but still to no avail. Perhaps it was just, Andy supposed, that it was far easier to acquire a label than it was to be rid of it.

And so here Andy found himself, in his second week of what was panning out to be a very long, and very boring summer vacation here along the banks of the Pratt in what was assuredly as far out in the sticks as you could possibly live without needing helicopter supply drops. He could imagine far better things he would like to be doing, but he was stuck here and as Bill Murray had put it, "That's the fact, Jack."

His time there beside the lake was unfortunately short this morning as another of Pratt's teenage population stumbled across him.

"Oh Christ, what the hell are you doing here you fucking loser?" The words came from behind him, dripping with vitriol.

Andy turned around to see the girl that was the bane of his entire existence, Samantha Mackenzie. Andy could clearly remember a kind and compassionate little girl that he had grown up with who lived just a few houses down from him; he remembered playing with her and although he wouldn't admit so, having an enormous crush on her. But unfortunately, the teenage years interceded and the girl that was once his friend was how the teenager that seemed so intent on making him as miserable and unhappy as she possibly could.

It always seemed that Samantha was trying her hardest to put him in his place, as she saw it. Whenever Andy started to make friends with anyone, Samantha spread rumors to make him miserable. Whenever Andy, God forbid, started to show interest in any girl at good 'ol Kingston High School, Samantha would turn that girl into a pariah if she so much as dared be friends with him. He had busted his brain for hours to figure out exactly what he had done to turn her against him and always come up empty in that search.

To Andy, he had every bit as much of a hard time understanding Samantha's popularity as he did understanding his own lack thereof. She had brown hair down to just below her shoulders, blue eyes and was covered head to toe in freckles – something that he knew she was self conscious of but would never make fun of her over it, not being willing to hurt her the way that she hurt him. All in all, she was definitely pretty (Andy thought), but she wasn't drop-dead gorgeous. She was caustic and often very mean-spirited, and rarely nice to anyone outside of her own little clique (many of which received runners-up positions in making Andy's life hell), and yet somehow she was the most popular girl in school.

And here she was, standing behind him, giving him a look that made him feel like an insect. "Why don't you get the fuck out of here and go jerk off, or whatever you do in your house all day." She said, her lip curling into a sneer as Andy turned around to look at her sheepishly.

"What's it to you?" Andy asked, detesting the way that his voice sounded pinched and nervous.

Samantha's face twisted into a slim smile of satisfaction. She had intimidated him and she knew it. "We are going swimming and we don't want your faggot ass around here." She replied, every word conveyed that his very existence on this earth offended her.

Andy looked up and was dismayed to see four more of Sam's friends walking down the path in the direction of the lake. Whatever emotional wounds Samantha was able to do to him, it would be far worse if four of her friends joined into putting him down and unleashing their combined hatred upon him. He decided immediately that he'd rather look like a coward than to stay there and be bullied by them.

So Andy slowly stood up and walked away without making eye contact with his onetime friend. He didn't walk down the path; hell no, he didn't want to have pass through the gauntlet of the other angst-filled teenagers that saw him as the community whipping boy. Instead he decided to walk directly into the forest that was at the base of the mountain, he figured he would walk through there for a while and then cut sideway back onto the road – whatever it took to avoid any more of a confrontation today.

Samantha wasn't about to allow that though, she continued heaping abuse on him as he walked away, making him feel very much like a dog skulking away with it's tail between it's legs. As he walked off into the trees he heard the whistle as one of his skipping stones came close enough to his head for him to feel the wind of it's passing. This got his attention enough for him to turn around. For the first time there was hurt in his eyes as he looked at Samantha for a moment before turning back to the woods. If there was any kind of compassion in her own, he was unable to see it.

"There's one of your skipping stones, pussy." She yelled after him. He continued walking further and further into the woods until her jeers grew quieter and finally stopped altogether.

Andy stayed in the woods for a while. He hadn't intended to linger after he had been evicted from his spot at the shoreline, but something still kept him in the woods. He sat on a rock for a long time, lost in thought, listening to the sound of the splashing and the horseplay coming from yonder lake. Finally, after a half hour or so he stood up and carefully crept toward the lake again.

When he got close enough to make out what was happening at the pond, he crouched down behind some bushes, just watching. He could see the assembled swimmers, all teens roughly his own age, having fun in the water splashing at each other and swimming about the sun-warmed water.

He saw the Queen Bitch herself in a red bikini that left remarkably little to the imagination, she was in the embrace a boy – Kevin his name was. She was laughing and chatting lightly, a far cry from her attitude toward Andy just short time earlier. He would occasionally lean in and plant kisses on her neck, she would accept these with a giggle; but the couple times he reached down to cup her red cloth-clad behind in his hands, she would swat his hands away and whisper something to him.

Andy could feel a swell of jealousy watching all of this, although he couldn't put his finger on its exact source. Was it jealousy toward the guy with Samantha? Almost assuredly not. Maybe it was just jealousy at them having so much fun with each other and he was never allowed to be a part of it. As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Andy was pretty sure that this was exactly what was upsetting him.

Part of him just wanted to run out there and start yelling. Part of him wanted to ask what about him wasn't good enough to be part of their shitty group?

He never did though, regardless of how much he wanted to. Instead he watched in silence for a little bit longer and then turned away and crept quietly away from the water and back into the trees. He was angry and hurt all at the same time, It never really occurred to him that there might not be anything wrong with him and that sometimes, teenagers especially, just needed someone to be their pariah – and Andy Verner happened to draw Pratt, Tennessee's short straw in that regard.

Andy found his way home, physically and emotionally drained, after a long walk through the woods that he had never really intended to take. After leaving the lake he just started walking through the trees and then through the pathways that crisscrossed the bottom of the mountain. He wasn't really thinking of anything, just trying to do anything that he could to wear himself out in both mind and body. He mostly succeeded, and by the time he had arrived at his back door the pain and torment he was under had been dulled away to the point that he simply felt numb.

His house was a pigsty as usual; paper plates and beer bottles littered every available surface. There was no good to be had in complaining about it. "Sorry Andy, the maid called in sick today" was his mother's usual response to the continual disarray of the Verner household. He kicked his tennis shoes off at the door and wandered through the living room. Amy Verner had brought home some guy from whatever bar in Kingston she had gone to last night, that meant she probably wouldn't even wake up until two or three in the afternoon.

Andy recalled the guy when they had both stumbled in last night. He was a scruffy looking wreck of a man with bad teeth, but then again all of his mom's one-night stands had bad teeth. The thing that really struck him though was his absolutely obnoxious mule-bray of a laugh. From Andy's bedroom at the other end of the hall he could hear it.

HEE-HAW, HEE HAW!

It made him absolutely crazy; he fell asleep with his headphones on, just any kind of noise to drown out that fool laugh. There apparently wasn't any escaping the hell that his life was even when he was at home. It was like everyone was playing a sick joke on him sometimes. It was like he got a phone call at some point; "This is the school of hard knocks calling; I'm really sorry to tell you that you are a loser and your mom's a slut. Tough break Andy-boy."

As Andy walked down the hall, he could hear two sets of loud snores coming from his mom's bedroom. He listened for a moment and then continued on down the hall to his own room. He got inside and quietly latched the door before flopping down onto his bed and putting his headphones on. Right now all he wanted to do was to go to sleep and pretend that that when he woke up he would be starting this turd of a day over.

He pressed the power button and lay back, closing his eyes as he listened to a new song by some guy he never heard of blaring out over the radio.

_Baby can you dig your man?_

_He's a righteous man._

It was an okay song, nothing he would rush out and buy the album over, but it was okay enough to listen to just to pass the time. Life isn't always fair, that was a truth that Andy was facing on a daily basis. But again, as Bill Murray said, "That's the fact, Jack."


	3. Chapter 3

At about the same time that young Andrew Verner was having abuse heaped upon him by his unpleasant childhood crush; Floyd Wilks, sporting an old worn pair of coveralls and a big straw hat, was outside in his back yard furiously tearing weeds out of his garden with a rake. He was humming softly as he did so along with an old, almost antiquated transistor radio sitting on the grass, its antenna glinting off the light of the late morning sun. A couple hours earlier his son and soon to be daughter-in-law took his Caddy and headed to the mall in Akron, they wanted to go have breakfast together and then begin planning their wedding. They graciously invited Floyd to come along. He declined the invitation, saying he didn't want to intrude. And besides, his disaster of a garden needed some work anyway.

Truth be told, Floyd hated gardening. He didn't like getting his hands dirty, he didn't like rough and sweaty work; and most of all, he didn't like vegetables. All the same, he was reasonably sure that being both southern and old, he was required to grow things in the ground and (usually) pawn them off on the neighbors. Corn, squash, carrots, green beans and cucumbers were all laid out in orderly little rows. The cucumbers weren't doing so hot this year, but everything else was flourishing. The corn Floyd ate readily; but everything else he gave as wide a berth as possible.

Winded, He stripped off his work gloves and leaned his rake against the maple tree running up beside the garage. He sat down on a short brick wall that surrounded the garden, a wall that he built with his own hands about ten years previous. A glass of ice water was sitting there on the wall, waiting for him. Condensation was heavy on the glass, drops of water dripping down it's sides to be absorbed greedily by the dry bricks that it was setting on.

After draining off almost half of the glass in one long gulp, Floyd exhaled deeply and turned his attention to the sound of the radio. The news reporter sounded thin and tinny over the old radio. It was the same old thing every time he checked on the news last night or this morning; east Texas was the first item on the docket. "…And the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia reported this morning that there is no cause for alarm concerning the quarantine of Arnette, Texas. Doctor Herbert Denninger of the CDC stated, in a morning press conference, that the containment of a strain of the influenza virus has been successful and that it will not be necessary to evacuate or quarantine the surrounding areas - although he declined to comment on when the quarantine will be lifted. In other news…"

Floyd wrinkled his nose distastefully. Nothing was quite as bad as a really nasty case of the flu bug during the summertime. He figured that it might not be such a bad idea to go into the doctor this week or the next and get himself a flu shot. After all, he wasn't getting any younger and a case of the flu at his age wasn't a joke. He had an air show coming up in a couple weeks that he would be flying in, and piloting a stunt plane with a head cold wasn't a very good idea. He might be getting up there in years, but he didn't have any intention of dying this month.

He considered that he should probably get down to the hangar today and start getting his plane ready for the show, but discarded the idea. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, he didn't need to get started on that for at least another week or so. In the meantime he had his much-hated garden to deal with, he thought sourly.

A cluster of cheerful little beeps from the cordless phone atop the radio gave him the little excuse that he needed to set aside his agricultural aspirations for a little bit. He answered the phone to the pleasant voice of Amanda's mother, Faye. Her and her husband had gone to Hawaii for a week, as they did pretty much every summer, leaving their daughter at home under the mild supervision of Floyd. Faye called her house every day at about this time, and if she couldn't reach her daughter she would call here to make sure that everything was okay. This whole procedure had been repeated so many times throughout Amanda's teenage years that is had long since become routine.

For a moment Floyd had considered telling his neighbor about their children's planned nuptials, but quickly changed his mind. That information wasn't his to tell and she would find out from Amanda pretty quickly anyway. Instead he listened to the woman bantering on about what they were doing; things he had all heard before. Then she told him, as she already had at least a dozen times prior, that they would be home first thing in the morning on the 24th. Floyd took this all in politely and added that he hoped they had a good time and then hung up the phone.

Floyd lifted the brim of his hat and looked up at the sky. A stiff breeze was starting to blow, and some storm clouds off in the distance were threatening to bring an end to his exquisitely perfect morning. _We could use the rain_, he told himself. Floyd decided that he might find himself down at the airstrip today working on his plane, after all.

Amanda's parents were not going to be as happy about the marriage as he himself was, that was without question. Floyd thought (and if he asked, Amanda would confirm it) that Amanda's parents were more than a little bit disappointed with her. They were both professionals. Thomas Turner (_Gah_, Floyd thought, even the name sounded pretentious) was an attorney for some real estate company in Cleveland, and Faye Turner was an accountant for the city of Kent. Both of them seemed to be more than a little bit put off by their daughter who, while still planning on going to college, had no further ambitions in life other than just being a wife and a mother.

Floyd certainly empathized with his son's girlfriend on this one. He never really understood people whose entire lives seemed to revolve around the acquisition of "stuff." He himself was not so much rich as he was thrifty, and didn't really care to be. His only real extravagances in life was his two planes and the five year old Cadillac. Aside from that, he really did not regret the fact that he couldn't take vacations like the Turner family could, or buy expensive cars every year like they could.

Life was about doing what it takes to make yourself and those you love happy, the adage that "whoever dies with the most toys wins" was absolute bullshit; Floyd knew it, he watched all of his siblings fall victim to the lures of rampant consumerism. He was sure that there was no greater proof of society's gluttony that his brother's "need" for a recreational vehicle with a price tag higher than what Floyd's house was worth. Amanda though, she already understood that all the money in the world couldn't buy happiness, and she was going to live her life accordingly. Floyd was very proud of the girl.

The wedding also, they were probably going to frown on. The kids had already made obvious to Floyd that they were intending to get married within the next few weeks. It would be a small and intimate service and reception. They were figuring on inviting maybe thirty or forty people from each family – just close relatives and friends. Without knowing for sure, it seems to Floyd that the Turners – with all of their other little traditions and rituals – would be more than a little bit put out that their only daughter was not going to have a large traditional wedding - which would undoubtedly be more an outlet for them to show off than it would be a benefit for the kids.

He hoped that they would get over it as quickly as possible and just be happy for their child. What makes them enjoy their lives wasn't necessarily the same thing that would make their daughter, or Floyd's son for that matter, happy. If they didn't like it, too damn bad because (as Andy Verner could have told them) life isn't always fair and sometimes you just need to suck it up and deal with it.

Draining off the last of his glass of water, Floyd slowly stood up, his joints creaking. Giving one last baleful look at his garden, he turned and started walking toward the house while thinking that if nothing else, the next few weeks were going to be extremely interesting.


	4. Chapter 4

**I**

Barefoot, a black teenager sat down on the only piece of furniture in the room; a long padded bench that seemed intended for either sleeping or sitting, uncomfortably. The officer that just arrested the sixteen-year-old closed the heavy steel door and locked the dead bolt with an audible snap. Like an old friend, Neil Dawes once again found himself enjoying the dubious hospitality of the juvenile holding room at the Oak Valley Police Station in Oak Valley, Maryland.

Indeed, it would be hard to believe that there was any place that better suited the tastes of the discriminating underage petty criminal than the old OVPD could. With its four bare white walls, colorless bench, and the smell of what must be gallons of Clorox bleach that was used to disinfect the room daily; nobody could say that this place wasn't a treat for an upstanding young man like mister Dawes on each of his numerous visits to these particular accommodations.

He quickly noted that someone had somehow smuggled a pen into the room since his last visit. That particular wit had written "Todd Peterson sux dick!" on the wall behind the bench and then below it drew a fascinating little caricature of one stick figure performing fellatio on another stick figure. Neil believed he could narrow down the artist to one of two people; both his own age and both of them enjoyed the hospitality of the Oak Valley Police juvenile holding room every bit as often as he did, maybe more.

By his best estimates, he would be there for at least another four hours. Neither of his parents got off work until five o'clock and both of them had long since stopped disrupting their daily routine just for something as common as the police informing them that they had their son in custody, again. No, they would instead let him stew in this room for the rest of the day and pick him up, after signing all the necessary documents and agreeing to appear in juvenile court, on their way home.

Perhaps we have already drawn certain speculations as to the background and lifestyle of Neil Dawes and his family, so let us dispel them now. Neil Dawes doesn't come from a bad neighborhood, his parents are not divorced nor is his father abusive. There are no drugs in the Dawes household, nor is there any alcohol, not so much as an occasional beer. In fact, Neil's parents are extremely well off. ("Getting ahead" as Neil's father Nathaniel might have said.)

As the sole African-American family in the exclusively white neighborhood of Oak Valley, the Dawes' hadn't had the easiest time being accepted and this was made all the more problematic with Neil's seeming inability to stay out of trouble. Quite often they pointed out that it "wasn't his fault". Which, in a way, was the absolute truth. From the very beginning, Neil struggled to be accepted in his new neighborhood and his new school. However, had Mister and Missus Dawes known who their son would find acceptance with, they might have decided to move somewhere else.

Within a month of moving in, their son had already been arrested twice. He spent most of his time hanging around with three boys, the ringleader being William Hayes, the son of the county sheriff's department. The three other boys had a rudimentary cunning that allowed them to instinctively get their way out of most of their run-ins with the law. Neil however, was generally pretty guileless and it was a foregone conclusion that whatever trouble the four of them got it, Neil Dawes would somehow end up the one blamed.

**II**

The day started fairly normal for Neil. With school out now he decided to spend the morning watching television and playing video games. He woke up, as he normally did, with the dawn. He stayed in bed though, pretending to be asleep, until his parents left for work – No early morning discussion with his parents ever seemed to end well. And since he wanted this to be a good day, he decided just to not to allow himself to be noticed.

Once his parents were out the door, he finally got up and around. After showering and eating breakfast he settled into, what he had thought would be, a long and uneventful day of doing absolutely nothing.

Neil was sitting in front of the television, peripherally listening to MTV while he fiddled with his Gameboy, trying to figure out why it wasn't working properly when the doorbell rang. He got up and checked to see who it was and was both gladdened and disheartened to find his friend (and one of the two suspected artists who decorated the wall he was currently leaning against) William Hayes standing at the door.

"Hey, man" Neil said. "Come on in, I'm just hanging out and watching TV."

Neil ushered his friend in. He was happy that his two younger sisters, Ayja and Korin, weren't home. Neither of them cared much for Will, as though they both sensed his general untrustworthiness and his propensity for leaving trouble in his wake wherever he went. More than this, Neil was more than a little bit ashamed at the quality of the friends he had made here in Oak Valley even though he would never admit to that.

They sat and watched MTV for a while, but all the time Neil could sense the growing restlessness in his friend. "Neil, let's get out of here and go do something." Will finally said.

This was the thing that Neil was really hoping that he wouldn't hear out of his friend's mouth. "Let's go do something" almost always meant, "Let's go cause some trouble."

"What do you want to do?" Neil asked.

Will shrugged and stood up, putting his shoes back on. (Shoes were not allowed on the Dawes family's pristine white carpets, no sir.) "Hurry up" he yelled at Neil, who was hopping around on one foot, attempting to get his shoes on. They got out the door and onto their bikes. The crisp, slightly acrid ocean air was blowing up from the shoreline slightly chilling the boys as they walked outside, despite the sunlight.

As they slowly pedaled their way back up the hill from the beachfront and into town Neil was, for a while anyway, lulled into believing that that might not actually get into any serious trouble today.

"You know that girl, Cindy Kellerman?" Will asked with a mean-spirited glint was in his eye. This particular glint usually only surfaced when he was talking about fighting or sex, on this occasion it was the latter.

"Yep" Neil replied. He knew her; Cindy Kellerman was a girl that moved here during the last few weeks of school. She was a tiny little redheaded girl; a sophomore, he was pretty sure. He had chatted with her once or twice before school ended and thought that she was pretty nice. And although he had seen her once or twice around town in the couple weeks since then, he hadn't said anything to her.

"She lives just a few house down from me." Will said, there was the mean-spirited glint again. "I'm 'so' going to hit that."

"You aren't going to hit shit." Neil said. He knew that in the mind of Will Hayes, Will was the ultimate god of virility. But it was definitely only in his mind. It was laughable that a girl as pretty as Cindy was would even look twice at the likes of his friend.

To start with, Will had a major case of what Neil's sisters would call "pizza face." Colonies of oozing pimples made their way across his face, from his chin all the way up to his forehead. He was overweight with thick jowls and eyes that were too small for his head, the effect made him look almost surreally like a not-too-bright pit bull. It was obvious that when the acne problem did clear up, one day, he would instead be adorned with scars left behind from their presence on top of his already unfortunate looks.

Even if you could overlook the distastefully grim exterior, William made sure that what you uncovered beneath that wasn't any great improvement. He was abrasive and narcissistic; he spent an unusually large amount of time bragging about his promiscuity to his friends – boasts that anyone with half a brain recognized as being patently false.

Worse, when he got angry he became violent and always kept a knife in his pocket. Although he had never stabbed anyone with it, he had made threats and he talked a great deal about wanting to kill someone. We would be relieved to know that our new acquaintance, Neil Dawson, had more than once seriously questioned the mental stability of his friend.

The two of them rode on until they reached the main drag. Without coming to a complete stop, William jumped off of his bike and dropped it onto its side right in front of the Seven-Eleven. The store was a garish sneer of colors that looked jarringly out of place in this quaint and tastefully upper-class piece of New England. Neil brought his own bike to a stop and sensibly dropped down the kickstand, parking it neatly and unobtrusively beside the plate glass windows of the store.

They went inside. Neil immediately knew exactly what was expected out of him, even if no words were exchanged in the matter. He walked up to the counter and picked up a pack of gum and started to chat casually with the clerk as it was rung up. The clerk, white of course, was giving him a look of distaste. Just once Neil would have liked to be looked at by the fine citizens of Oak Valley like he wasn't at their front door trying to sell them magazine subscriptions.

But at this point, keeping the clerk busy was Neil's primary action item. If the clerk was busy thinking about how much he wished the young black man in his store would get out, he wouldn't be paying attention to the fine mister Hayes who was busily stuffing cans of Miller Highlife into the oversized pockets of his khaki pants.

"Thank you, sir!" Neil said, smiling ingenuously as he walked out of the store, a few seconds after William did.

The two of them left and got on their bikes, neither of them daring to do something as suspicious as look behind them back into the store to see how carefully the store clerk was scrutinizing them. Had they done so, they would have seen the gentleman pick up the phone and dial the police. Had they seen this, they almost definitely wouldn't have gone to the park. Had they not gone to the park, Neil would almost definitely not be currently cooling his feet in the Oak Valley PD's star accommodations and sucking up the fragrant smell of chlorine bleach.

The park was mostly empty when they got there. A few kids and their mothers were off by the playground, and an elderly couple was walking down the path running through the middle. (The meandering path, because nothing simulates a gen-u-ine path through the forest like a curving concrete sidewalk.) Aside from that, they were alone. The two of them sat down on the bench and broke out the two 40-ounce cans of malt liquor from Will's voluminous pockets.

"I was figuring…" Neil said as he let out a ripping belch. "I was figuring, maybe we could grab Alex and go down to the beach tomorrow. You know, just get the hell out of this place for a little while."

"Fuck that. The beach is boring. Why don't you take your sisters there, the three of you can braid each other's hair." William sneered, laughing heartily at his own weak attempt at humor.

Probably wisely, Neil decided just to let it go and not say any more. He was already aware that Will was most like devising plans for tomorrow inside his own head. And it was almost certain that whatever plans he had in mind were far more likely to get them into trouble than a day at the beach would. A moment later the point was made moot when he spied someone that he knew over by the park restrooms.

William jumped up and set his beer back down on the bench. "I'll be right back, dude. I know that guy, I'm going to go see if maybe I can score us some shit."

He ran off in the direction of the restrooms. By "shit", Will probably meant grass… at least that's what Neil was hoping he meant. He had very little doubt that his friend would one day be dead from either drugs or violence and all that he hoped (as his parents did) was that he wouldn't be caught in whatever trouble William had caused on his departure from his mortal coil.

"Howdy Neil, what have we got going on here today?" He suddenly heard from a voice behind him.

Neil turned around and his stomach immediately dropped. Officer Graves was standing behind him, He could count on one hand the number of times he had been arrested by this particular cop for a variety of reasons, barely. Neil tried to mouth something, but nothing came out. After he was satisfied he wasn't going to get an answer, the officer walked over and picked up the two-thirds empty can of beer that Will had set down just a couple minutes before.

"Mister Dawes, I thought that you and I had a talk, I thought I wasn't going to be seeing you getting in no more trouble. What happened?" Graves asked.

Neil didn't say anything, but instead turned toward where William had gone. Predictably, Will and the guy he was talking to pulled their best David Copperfield impressions and vanished as soon as they got a whiff of blue. Now they were gone and here Neil was with two cans of beer.

It figures, Neil thought.

**III**

Sometimes silence can be deafening. Neil sat at the dinner table, poking at his untouched pot roast and mashed potatoes with his fork – not because he was particularly hungry, but because it gave him something to look at beside the disappointed looks his parents were giving him. His father had come and picked him up from the police station and drove him back home in his Mercedes Benz, wordlessly.

When they got home, his father very calmly and evenly told him to go upstairs to his bedroom and stay there until dinnertime. Neil nodded and walked up the stairs and closed his bedroom door behind him, flopping down onto his bed. He stared out the window after that, watching the ships moving into and out of the bay. Gradually the light slowly faded away, he didn't bother turning a light on; he just watched out the window waiting for tonight's inevitable talk with his parents about today's screw up.

The talk never came.

Anaya and Korin were very quiet during dinner as well. Sensing that something happened today and not wanting to be the ones to incur their parents wrath, the kept to themselves and ate their dinner in near-silence. But whatever Neil was expecting, it didn't come.

"Go on upstairs and get cleaned up." His father said, in his distressingly calm "angry voice."

The two girls got up and carried their plates to the kitchen.

"You too" his father said to him.

Neil just stared at him stupidly for a moment and then nodded slowly before standing up and following after his sisters to put his plate into the dishwasher and then go upstairs to bed.

He had gotten a short reprieve from whatever punishment was coming this time – But it would be a short one; his father only seemed to get angrier the longer he waited for something like this.


	5. Chapter 5 June 21st

**I**

"Sweetheart, could you come on out here for a few minutes? We have something we want to talk to you about."

The request came from the hallway outside of Andy's bedroom after a brief tap on the door. Andy looked over at the door for a moment, wondering whether he should respond or just feign sleep and get out from having to deal with his mom and her boyfriend of the week for a little bit longer.

The self-deliberation only lasted for a moment before he said, reluctantly; "Yeah mom, I'll be right out."

Finding out what the news was going to be was only a distraction. The only real reason he was going out there was to raid the kitchen and get something to eat. He had been in his room pretty much the entire time since he got home from his catastrophic trip to the lake the day before. Fortunately, between having his own bathroom, a mini-fridge packed with Dr. Pepper and his Playstation; it was fairly easy for Andy to shut the entire world out and stay inside his bedroom until he deemed it safe to venture forth again.

Although he wasn't sure that it was safe, in fact he was almost sure that it wasn't, he got up and put a t-shirt on and walked out his door and down to the living room.

In the living room, he found his mom who, at just after 11:00 am, looked to be only slightly toasted. She was sitting on the couch cuddled up to the grinning idiot of a man with the HEE-HAW laugh. He looked like a hippie that was still caught mostly unawares that the sixties, or even the seventies, had come to an end quite some time back. He had thick bifocal glasses through which he apparently still needed to squint to be able to see clearly. He had long and disgustingly greasy hair that was tied back into a ponytail with several rubber bands running down its length.

Andy's mother, on the other hand looked like what her last boyfriend referred to as "ten miles of bad road." She was only thirty years old and looked like she was easily fifty; the product of twenty years of smoking, drugs and alcohol. Her face was waxy and pockmarked; a quality that was accentuated rather than covered up by the copious amounts of makeup that found its way onto her face every morning.

Andy wasn't even sure if either of them had gotten any sleep, he heard them leave the house about six or seven last night – to go to a bar in Kingston, no doubt. Now they were sitting there both looking at him, grinning like the idiots that they both were.

"Come and sit down with us sweetie, we have something important to tell you." His mom said, smiling lopsidedly and patting the couch cushion nest to her.

Expressionlessly, he walked over to the couch and sat down next to them, awaiting whatever absurd thing they would have to tell him – and it turned out to be worse than he had thought.

"Sweetie" his mom started. "Gary just started working here at the gas station and he's going to be moving in with us."

Andy tried to keep his face as calm as possible, he didn't want to show his mom and Gary the obvious disgust that he felt at this news. But the lack of expression was obviously not what the two of them were expecting; making them both look troubled, or maybe confused.

Amy Verner continued on, using her own ninth-grade education to feel out her words and try to make her son accepting, if not happy, of her decision. "Sweetheart, I'm sure the two of you are going to get along. You both like fishing, maybe you and Gary can go out this weekend and catch us something…"

Her voice tapered off toward the end, and Andy flashed with irritation. The last time that he had gone fishing was about two years ago, and even then it was something he insisted on doing by himself. He really wanted to explode at her, at both of them. He didn't though, he put on his best shit-eating grin and pretended he was okay with all of this; that he was okay with everyone in the neighborhood, Samantha included, getting a nice big eyeful of his slut mom's new boyfriend.

Taking his smile to be enthusiasm, or at least acceptance, the two adults smiled a little more. The braying idiot laughed loudly, the sound felt like cold spike driving into Andy's temples, but he didn't let it show.

Gary's laugh cut off and his eyes seemed to bug out a little, giving him an expression a little like a cat about to hack out a hairball. He covered his mouth and coughed a couple times and then spat a large wad into his hand that he wiped off on an old, used Kleenex on the coffee table.

Recovering, Gary talked a little hoarsely "I'll bring my fishing poles back with me when I come home (Andy cringed at him calling this place home) and we can go see if we can catch something this weekend. Are there any fish in that lake down the street?"

Andy knew that aside from a meager few catfish, there wasn't. "I'm not really sure, I guess we can find out."

"Okay my man!" Gary held out his hand, the same one he had just spat into to shake Andy. Andy's stomach did a slow, nauseous roll at the thought but he took the hand and shook it anyway, trying not to show the revulsion on his face.

"Are you hungry, sweetheart? I was just about to make some breakfast." Amy Verner asked her son.

"Nah, I'm okay." Andy lied, getting up and walking into the kitchen.

He decided he would make do with just a couple of granola bars and a can of Dr. Pepper. His mom's idea of breakfast was usually underdone scrambled eggs, with which she drank beer. The smell of the two combined never ceased to make him nauseous. And since his stomach was already feeling a little bit delicate after his encounter with Mister Donkey-laugh, Andy figured it would be best to opt out.

And then, with speed that was both remarkable and disquieting, the two went back to ignoring Andy's existence completely. Gary turned on the television and started watching a Jerry Springer rerun while Amy went into the kitchen and hawked up a wad of snot into the sink before she washed out a skillet and broke a few eggs into it.

Andy returned to his room and ate the granola bars on his bed quietly. He grabbed his backpack out of the closet, where he had expected to leave it hanging until school started back up a few months from now.

Detached and vacant, he was almost finished before he even realized that what he was doing was filling up his backpack with the clothes and toiletries necessary to get away from this house; to run away. The realization didn't trouble him, quite the contrary, it excited him. Andy had never really seen himself as particularly brave or daring. The idea that he was about to say he had enough and get the fuck out of Dodge, or Pratt in his case, excited him to no end.

He had no problem at all saying to hell with this place and its entire people. "Who are you trying to fool?" a small voice inside his head told him, but he immediately buried that feeling back down.

**II**

Andy sat up against a tree with a blanket on the ground underneath him. The forest enveloping him was serene and calm. There were birds in the trees chirping and a little light wind rippled through the branches, making the leaves rustle gently. Although he was only about sixty or so feet off the road, he could easily make himself believe that he was in the middle of a great forest without civilization in any direction for possibly hundreds of miles. Only the rare car going down the road off to his left was able to break this illusion.

It would be dark before too much longer. Andy wanted to make a fire, but was too afraid that someone might be looking for him and didn't want the attention that the light this close to the road might give him. He wasn't completely sure yet where he was headed – he had covered maybe half the distance to Kingston today, about eight miles or so, and would make it the rest of the way tomorrow. After that, who can say?

He thought about going out to the west coast, California maybe. It was a romantic notion full of mystery and excitement, and at this point anything seemed possible as long as he was out of the suffocating and soul-killing quagmire of Pratt, Tennessee.

And overall, things were going easy for him so far. He walked out of the house and right out of town without anyone even seeming to realize it. The part that made Andy the angriest and the saddest was the fact that he took his backpack and walked right out the door past his mom and Gary but neither of them even noticed that he was leaving. Part of him wanted to yell at them, to tell him he was leaving and never coming back again, (Aren't you going to try to stop me?) but he didn't – If they weren't concerned enough to notice him leaving, then he didn't want to be there anymore anyway.

Boredom was starting to get the better of him. No matter how excited he was and how beautiful the woods around him were, he gradually felt himself drifting off to sleep with nothing else to keep his mind occupied. He finally gave in wholeheartedly just as the sun was giving today's last gasps of daylight. He laid down on the old blanket (couldn't I have remembered to bring a pillow? He thought.) and fell into a deep sleep.

**III**

Andy awoke with a start and a gasp for air, his eyes opening wide. He jumped up to his feet as though they were spring-loaded. The forest that he was in was gone and instead he was in the middle of a cornfield. The sky above was a rich azure, darkening in the sunset. A warm summer breeze blew across the fields, causing the corn to ripple.

He turned his head to the side, thinking he could hear something – it sounded as though someone was playing a guitar. He walked toward the sound, pushing the tall stalks of corn out of his way with both hands. Just as he was thinking that someone must have been standing in the middle of the corn somewhere playing music, the field abruptly ended.

There was a simple ranch farmhouse sitting at the edge of the corn. A large tree grew over it with a tire swing tied to one of its lower branches. A trench had been worn in the ground beneath the swing from what surely could have been eons of use. Andy paid no mind to this; his attention was rapt on a black woman sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch strumming her guitar and singing.

_What a friend we have in Jesus,_

_All our sins and griefs to bear._

_What a privilege to carry,_

_Everything to God in prayer._

The woman was old, almost ancient. Her skin was wrinkled and stretched across her bones, there was nothing more than a think wisp of hair on the top of her spectacled head. She stopped her song and put her guitar down as Andy walked up, and he could see at once that there was wisdom in that face.

She smiled at him and leaned forward in her rocking chair.

"Hello Andrew" she said to him deliberately and slowly, her eyes studying him.

Andy looked confused, wondering how a place he had never been before could still seem so familiar.

"Who are you… and how do you know who I am?" He asked, at last.

"I'm Abby Freemantle, but the folks around these parts just call me Mother Abigail." And then with a smile: "I'm a hundred and six years old and I still make my own bread!"

Andy smiled despite himself; the woman's good cheer was infectious. And if this was all a dream it was a good one, or at least a pleasant one. But it did occur to him that she didn't answer the second half of his question.

"What…what is this place?" Andy asked, looking around in curiosity and wonder. The place seemed like it could easily be out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He could feel the roughness of the porch rail he had his hand on, the old wood weathered from possibly a hundred or more summers.

"This is Hemingford Home, Nebraska, Andy. You're gonna come and see me real soon, you and all your friends. But for now you need to go back. There's someone you need to bring with you, someone you can't leave behind."

Andy shook his head, confused. "I don't know what you mean, I'm coming here, why?"

Mother Abigail didn't answer but instead looked past Andy to the corn behind him.

"It's not time yet to ask questions, time is short." She said and then pointed to the cornfield "There's rats in the corn."

Andy turned around and saw that, indeed, there were rats running all around at the base of the corn stalks, gnawing at them. He turned back around to ask her what that meant but the house and Mother Abigail were both gone. Instead he was looking at a pond.

Gone were the cornfield and the house and it gradually dawned on Andy that he was standing knee deep in the water at what looked exactly like Pratt Lake. Only this couldn't possibly be Pratt Lake, the water there was sometimes a little cloudy but it was usually clear. This water was dark and still, almost the color of ink.

With a shiver, he realized that the water was still even with the slightly chill breeze that was now coming in front the west. He couldn't even see the bottom of the lake. It was almost like…

No, he could see something down there. It was like there were two red stone, or burning embers there at the bottom of the lake bed. At first he didn't realize how he didn't see them the first time, but then it became clear that they were getting bright, or maybe closer. A growing twist of fear grew in his gut when he realized that while they did look like burning embers, there was something that they looked even more like…

They looked like eyes.

Andy wanted to turn to run, but seemed gripped there in that spot as the eyes suddenly gained intensity like a blast furnace. They broke to the surface as part of a person, a misshapen faced monster with those searing red eyes. Andy became aware that a guttural scream was coming from his own throat as the thing grabbed him with its hands and slowly started to drag him under the water. He felt the horrible claws pulling him down into the inky blackness of the water. Despite his struggles he felt the cold of the lake wash over his face and suck him down into the darkness.

Very gradually, Andy became aware that he wasn't drowning – and if it were it would surely be from the sweat that was drenching his body and the blanket he was sleeping on. He sat up, shaking from the dream he had just had and looked around, the dark forest around him suddenly seemed like a fake, like a facsimile of what was reality. Both of his dreams seemed so real.

And then he was sure he heard that voice in his head again. "You're gonna see me real soon, you and all your friends."

Andy sat up and quickly stuffed his blanket and the rest of the stuff he had brought with him back into his backpack. Surely he wasn't about to head back to Pratt because on old black woman in his dreams told him to. No… that wasn't it at all, it was because he was a sensible person and this wasn't the way to go about getting out of that crappy town. He would find a better way, but in the meantime… it was time to go back.


	6. Chapter 6 June 22nd

Across the country a huge game that looked very similar to tag was being played out, only the rules of superflu tag are much different than what you remembered from your childhood.

First, once you are it, anyone you even come close to has just been tagged – now they are it. Second, once you are it, you stay it until the game is over. And most importantly, there were absolutely, positively no winners.

Sean Holt was a truck driver delivering frozen food to a Burger King outside of Columbus. He was having a pretty good day, a situation that was going to change all too soon. He finished up his delivery easily enough and stopped to get the signature of the store manager who he noticed had a bit of a cough. Always the pleasant fellow, Sean told the manager that he hoped he felt better. The manager smiled and gave Sean back his clipboard; he also gave him the superflu.

Tag, you're it.

Sean traveled north along the expressway for a few miles and then decided to make a quick pit stop at a gas station. After he finished taking a leak he walked back to his truck and exchanged pleasantries with a bus driver who was himself going in to answer nature's call. This particular man was driving a bus full of girl scouts on a trip to a museum in Cincinnati. The moment he set foot back on the bus he sealed the fates of each of the forty-two girls on the bus; each of which would be dead before the week was out.

Tag, you're it.

Ron Hoff, the bus driver in question, made a quick stop at a tollbooth as he was getting off the Ohio Turnpike. Nancy Nagle, the matronly woman at the booth collected twelve dollars, some change and the superflu from mister Hoff then wished him a good day.

Tag, you're it.

Nancy Nagle hummed to herself as she drove home from work, she made a tidy little mental note to herself of the half dozen errands that she needed to make on her way home. She even mapped out the most efficient path she could take to get to all of those stops with a minimum of wasted time in between. Because, as Nancy's friends would tell you, Nancy was a very efficient woman.

She parked her sensible little Camry beside the Blockbuster Video and took the movies inside. She set them on the counter and walked back out. She smiled and greeted her fourteen-year-old daughter's best friend, Rachel Delany, on the way out. Rachel smiled back and although she seemed a little bit anxious and distracted, Nancy thought nothing of it as she went home to infect her family.

Tag, you're it.

Rachel in fact was anxious and distracted. She had missed her last period and was pretty sure that her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant despite his assurance that "you can't get pregnant the first time." Her fears would be confirmed an hour or so later after she brought home a pregnancy test and took it secretly into her bathroom.

It would all be a moot point, however, her and her baby both would be dead in the evening of the 23rd and the rest of her family would be gone on the 24th. Sadly, there would be no baby shower in Rachel Delany's future.

By the end of the 20th of June, Sean Holt and the people he infected, and they people that they, in turn, infected would number a little over nine thousand. The number that those people would go on to infect the next day would be beyond count.

On and on the game of tag went, the only way out of the game was to stop breathing and it would become clear in the next week that a very, very many people were going to find their way out of the game.

Tag, you're it.


	7. Chapter 7 June 23rd

**I**

The small Pitts S-2B stunt plane zipped down the runway at almost a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Its landing gear picked up off of the ground and seemed to rest on a cushion of air just above the asphalt for a few moments before the plane pitched skyward, climbing high into the air.

The biplane was pristine; the candy apple red hull was shined and waxed to a mirror finish. Even the cockpit glass was so unmarred and perfect that aside from the reflection, it was almost as though it wasn't even there. The engine gave off a high pitch whine, courtesy of the supercharger firmly ensconced beneath the brilliant red fuselage. It sounded like an entire armada of enraged hornets shooting skyward to battle.

At the end of it's seven thousand foot climb, the plane pitched even further up into the air so it was traveling vertically. Simultaneously climbing and slowing, the steep climb brought the plane to a place where it seemed to hang in the air, unmoving for a moment before it pitched back down and made three quick and precise rolls as it dove directly down toward the ground, it's speed climbing from a dead stall up to over two-hundred miles per hour. Suddenly and deliberately, the plane pitched back up again. And flew through a pair of wide loops, the second of which had an impressive roll at its apex. The effect was breathtaking, the plane and it's pilot seemed to thumb their nose at a concept so archaic and irrelevant as gravity; Sir Issac Newton be damned.

Floyd Wilks' face was stiff and unmoving, as though it had been carved out of a piece of stone. The only discernable movement was his eyes that were constantly darting back and forth between the view outside of the canopy and the all-telling instrument panel just below it. Everything he was doing was so firmly ingrained in his self that he was relying on muscle memory to bring each maneuver to perfection. He made the hard stunts look easy, and the easy stunts look like nothing more than a walk along the beach.

And why should they not be? He had done all of these things while flying above Vietnam early on in his career and then again much later over Iraq. The only difference between now and then was the price tag on the plane and the fact that nobody was currently shooting at him. Flight was and had always been his life's true hobby, and he was a master of it.

After he had climbed back to a safe altitude, he snapped the stick to the right sharply and spun the plane into a dangerous, turning dive. Floyd pressed a button just above his right knee and caused a plume of smoke to exit from the back in a corkscrewing pattern as he spun through the steep descent. The corkscrewing became tighter and tighter the closer he got to the ground and then he finally broke out of the dive and leveled the plane out around two thousand feet above the tree tops below. The trail of smoke he left gave a queer resemblance to a tiny and stationary tornado climbing into the sky above him.

A little out of breath from the rising and falling g-forces on his body, Floyd decided that he would fly it straight and level for a little while. He relaxed his hold on the controls slightly and relaxed in his seat, just taking in the scenery and enjoying the flight for a while.

**II**

Floyd woke up with the sunrise that morning with the expectation that he was going to go with Derek to the hangar today and spend some time tinkering around on their planes. However, not long after he had started his newspaper and the morning's first cup of coffee, Derek came down the stairs from his bedroom and said that he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be able to join him today.

Derek had walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, his father looked at him; pale with two bright spots of color in his cheeks. "Are you feeling okay, boy?" Floyd asked.

Derek just smiled; the fatigue was evident in his face. "Yeah, I went to bed last night feeling like I was maybe coming down with something." He stopped to take a sip of his coffee. "It looks like I was right."

Derek then grimaced at the taste and poured a little bit of powdered creamer into the cup and then stirred it before taking a second drink. This one he seemed to find more to his liking. He carried the cup with him as he walked over and sat down at the table across from his father.

Floyd nodded. "While I'm gone today, you ought to make an appointment with Doctor Haskell. He will give you some antibiotics or something, that will have whatever you've got on the run by tomorrow morning."

This was a battle Derek was sure could not be won, the mechanical genius his father was aside, the man had a very dim and vague view of the medical arts; he was sure that there was nothing that a simple pill could not cure and the almighty penicillin was the mystical ambrosia that could cure anything. He was fairly positive he was having a bout of that flu that was going around. If so, it was just going to have to run its course and there wasn't a damned thing that any doctor was going to be able to do about it. But rather than argue this point with his dad, he figured that discretion was the finer point of valor.

"Sure dad, I'll give him a call today." He lied.

"Good, good. When you go there, tell him that I said 'hi.'" Floyd said. "Now is there anything you need me to pick you up when I get back from the field?"

"I don't think so." Derek said, "Amanda seems to have got everything pretty well under control. She's been shoving crap down my throat since I woke up. Vitamin C, these nasty tasting zinc lozenges and this stuff that I think is called euthanasia."

"Echinacea" Floyd corrected patiently.

"Whatever." Derek said, smirking. "I think she's back at her house right now making me up a pot of chicken noodle soup."

"Hey, get used to it. You are marrying the girl," Floyd said.

Derek considered this for a moment and nodded. "Yeah dad, I know. I'm just not used to someone taking care of every little thing for me like this. It makes me feel pretty useless…I hate being sick."

"You are just used to having a dad that's always been pretty useless as a parent." Floyd admitted. "Taking care of people was always your mom's deal, not mine. That's why you grew up rebuilding aircraft engines and then flying them – it's the only thing that I've ever been really good at.

"Amanda's doing things right, she's taking care of her husband to-be."

Derek acquiesced and carrying his cup of coffee, he went back to his bedroom to try to sleep off the flu.

Floyd finished up his cup of coffee and walked outside through the back screen door, letting it slam behind him. He walked across the dewy grass through his own backyard and into the neighbor's. After the rain yesterday, it looked like it was going to be a really nice day; it already felt like it was in the mid-seventies and it wasn't even nine in the morning yet.

He walked up the back steps to Amanda's house and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe a couple times before he opened the door and walked inside. He let the door close gently and looked around the steamy kitchen. It looked like Amanda had indeed been very busy; the kitchen was in a state of industrious chaos. Two pots were covered on the stove and the oven was on. The smell of simmering chicken noodle soup and baking bread was mouthwatering and made Floyd's stomach grumble in protest.

Not for the first time he wondered how it was that Amanda was so talented in the kitchen. He knew from past experience that her mother was an unmitigated catastrophe when it came to cooking anything that didn't have simple microwave instructions printed on the back.

"Amanda?" Floyd asked.

"In here!" The girls shouted cheerfully from the living room.

Floyd followed the voice and found her sitting on the couch, pulling articles of clothing out of a white plastic clothes basket and then folding them neatly before putting them in one of several tidy piles beside her. Her blond hair was caught up into a ponytail behind her and she was working furtively to the sound of an egg timer ticking away on the table in front of her.

_How on Earth did this girl get so perfectly domestic?_ Floyd wondered, not unkindly.

"Derek's lying down for a while, I figured I'd come by and see how you are doing." Floyd said, looking around. "But it sure looks like you have everything under better control than I could ever hope to."

Amanda smiled at him sunnily and nodded. "I figured I'd make him some soup while I start getting the house together for my Mom and Dad to get back. They gave me a call this morning, I was going to tell them but I figured I should wait and do it face to face."

Floyd nodded and bent over to kiss the girl on the top of her head. "I have my phone on me if you need anything. Make sure that Derek calls Doctor Haskell today; the sooner he starts taking something, the sooner he is going to start feeling better."

Floyd turned back for the door and stopped after a few steps, looking back. "How are you feeling?" He asked.

Amanda shrugged. "I feel fine. I never get sick."

III 

"Pitts on base to land zero-one-nine, if anyone's on approach or base then speak up." Floyd said, cutting back the throttle and extending the flaps on the little aircraft. After nobody responded to him he made a smooth and tight bank and lined himself up with the runway. He glided the plane in effortlessly and casually; he had landed on dirt strips and even fields of grass during his military career. The tiny Pitts S-2B came pretty close to landing itself.

"Clear of the runway" Floyd announced as his farewell to any and all that might be listening after he passed off of the runway and onto the taxiway back to his hangar. He was pleased with the work he had done on the plane, everything felt good – fantastic even. He was ready and looking forward to the air show coming up.

He steadily piloted the plane back along the concrete back to his hangar and then shut the plane down, taking off his headset and getting back out. The day was warming up pretty good; it was easily ten degrees hotter now than it was when he had first walked outside earlier that day. He shed his jacket and tossed it back into the plane along with his headset.

As he was pushing his plane back into its place in the hangar he looked over and noticed his son's rolling trash heap of a car sitting there in one of the parking spaces next to the hangar. Floyd had pretty much decided that he was going to buy his son and new daughter-in-law a new car as a wedding present. He would have to take a home equity loan out to pay for it, but it was worth it. If they were planning on starting a family together, they were going to need a car that could move without two or three hours of upkeep every week.

He was still examining his son's car as he got into his own and drove out of the airport. As he stopped and showed his ID card to the man at the gate, he noticed the gentleman had a bit of a sniffle. He thought very little of it until turned the news on after he had gotten back on the main road heading home, however. There was more talk about a flu epidemic, it seemed that his suspicion was right and he probably should go in and get a flu shot today. It couldn't hurt and just maybe he'd save himself the trouble of a bout with influenza, which is unpleasant all the time, but it's only that much worse when you have to live with it during the summer heat.

On this whim he pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and paged through hand found Doctor Haskell on his speed dial (it's best to always be prepared, Floyd thought) and pressed the send button.

The phone rang almost a dozen times, Floyd was about to give up and call back later when Trish, the doctor's secretary, answered the phone. He had known her for years, they had even briefly dated when they were in high school many, many years back.

"Doctor Haskell's office" she said, and then covered the mouthpiece that almost muted the deep, throaty cough.

"Hi Trish, this is Floyd Wilks. I've been hearing about this flu that's going around and I wanted to see if the doctor can give me a flu shot today." Floyd inquired.

"Sorry Floyd" Trish told, sneezing twice in the time it took her to get it all out. "The doctor is swamped with patients who all are down sick with this flu that's going around. I can pencil you in for next Thursday if that's okay with you?"

"Sure Trish" Floyd said. "Say, my son's been sick since last night, he hasn't been there yet today has he?"

"Derek?" Trish asked and then stopped to sneeze several times. "No, he hasn't even called in. Do you want me to make an appointment for him too?"

Floyd chuckled. "No thanks Trish, I just wanted to check. You have a good day. And you take care, it sounds like you might be coming down with something too."

"Thank you Floyd!" Trish said cheerfully and then hung up the phone.

It seemed to Floyd that everyone was getting sick, that town down south was still quarantined and there was even talk about martial law being declared there and the national guard moving in. Scary times, Floyd thought.


	8. Chapter 8

Neil Dawes and his questionable friend William Hayes pedaled up the street with a few of their other equally questionable friends behind them. In fact, he was slowly beginning to realize that the only person that was in the group that he wouldn't be better off to rid himself of was the girl that was riding her bike directly behind him. This girl happened to be the ineffable Cindy Kellerman. Cindy being, as we know, the current focus of dear mister Hayes intentions of "hitting that", so to speak.

Neil wasn't even supposed to be out of the house today, to be sure. After the unfortunate episode a few days earlier, his parents grounded him for two weeks and said he wasn't to even speak with William until this was all over. All in all, it wasn't as bad as he had thought; he feared some terrible punishment at least an equal to the rack or the iron maiden. However, his parents had only seemed worn down and disappointed in him, and somehow that made everything even worse.

Of course, in the late watches of the night while Neil was lying in bed, he swore that he was done getting into trouble. He swore that he was going to do whatever he needed to do to made his parents proud of him, even if that meant that he would have to forsake all of the friends he had made since moving to this shitty little stuck-up town.

His repentance was short lived, though. Any alcoholic would have told him that it's easy to swear off something when the temptation isn't right there in front of you. It's an entirely different thing when that particular temptation comes to the door and says, "Shit on you being grounded, com'on, let's go."

He had no excuses other than because his parents said he couldn't leave. And with his parents not home right now, that was the only thing he could say to William and that would place Neil under the fire of his friend's caustic ridicule.

And that is how Neil Dawes found himself pedaling up the hill toward the abandoned house that overlooked the bay. The two boys had met up with their friends Zack and Kyle – two identical twin brothers that shared William's lofty ambitions for getting themselves and others into trouble. And the two of them had, by some manner of dubious luck, befriended the new girl here in town and talked her into going with the four of them to go check out the Mendel House overlooking the town.

Predictably, the twins spent the afternoon having abuse heaped upon them by Will in his misguided efforts to impress the pretty Cindy Kellerman. Cindy, in the meantime, spent most of the trip talking to Neil. The two of them had quickly found that they shared a lot of the same interested, not the least of those being that they were both reasonably new to town and felt very uncomfortable and out of place there.

More than once he looked over and found Cindy smiling at him, he found that some times having dark skin was an enormous benefit; and this was one of them. Had he possessed the same pale white skin that she had, it would have been turning bright red at that moment. Had William understood the looks that were passing between the two of them, he would have immediately turned the focus of his ire to rest on Neil; but this was a subtlety that was lost on him.

**II**

The Mendel house had been abandoned for almost twenty years and like most large and ominous abandoned houses, it was the object of a certain amount of local folklore and superstition. Every new ghost story involving the old house became a little bit more outrageous and convoluted than the one before it.

What was known is that Doctor Thomas Mendel was an entrepreneur who brought his family to live in Oak Valley during the late seventies. He had made tens of millions of dollars, a sum that was worth considerably more then than it is now, and financed the building of the enormous mansion overlooking the coast. All of this money came from the invention of an artificial heart valve that the doctor had created and which was quickly tested and found safe to replace faulty biological ones.

Flush with money, Mendel started construction on the house and moved his family into it the following year. Then two things happened in the same year to absolutely devastate the Mendel family. The first was several lawsuits due to a fundamental flaw in the design of the heart valve which sent Thomas into bankruptcy. The second was the death of Thomas' daughter, Andrea.

Many of the stories told by the light of flashlights at the slumber parties of the well to do children of Oak Valley revolved around the death of thirteen-year-old Andrea Mendel. Some stories said that she had jumped out the window of her fourth floor bedroom window and killed herself in the house's driveway below. Other stories said that her father strangled her in her sleep after going insane over the loss of his fortune. Each new story was more unlikely and (the children thought) exciting than the one before that. The truth was, however, far more mundane – Andrea Mendel had died of childhood leukemia.

That didn't stop a brisk traffic flowing into and out of the house despite the fences and "no trespassing" signs that surrounded the property. There was no small number of teenagers that told stories about how they saw the ghost of Andrea Mendel walking around the upper floors of the mansion. And everyone had a friend of a friend who spent the night in the Mendel House and was never seen again. Conversely, it was fairly common for many of the same teenagers to go spend the night in the mansion after beguiling their parents into believing that they were someone else.

Such wasn't going to be the case for Neil Dawes and party today, thank you. The five teens only intended to go inside for a little while and look around before heading home. Neil especially wanted to cut this visit short, not wanting to be gone from home so long that his parents or sisters got home and found out that he was no longer there.

The five of teens parked their bikes outside the chain-link fence and one at a time went underneath it. A ditch had been dug underneath one place in the fence to avoid having to climb over the eight feet of chain-links with the barbed wire strung across it. The police would periodically come up the hill and fill in ditches like this and patch up the holes in the fence, but such entryways always appeared again within a few weeks.

William and the twins were the first one under the fence, crawling on their stomach underneath. Cindy decided to go next and Neil helped her as she slid feet-first on her back underneath. Halfway under, her shirt was caught on the bottom of the fence and pulled it up. Neil could clearly see the firm and girlish ivory-colored flesh of her stomach and the perfect almond-shaped navel set below it. She brushed her hand down and put her shirt back in place just as the lacy white fringe of her bra came into view.

Neil looked up, hoping that she wouldn't see the way he was looking at her. It was then he noticed that he wasn't the only one that saw what had happened. The twins had gone on to check out the front of the house but William was standing there looking down at Cindy lustfully – he looked as though he were starving to death and the red-haired girl was a candy bar.

He didn't pay much more attention to what had happened and followed Cindy under the fence and the five of them had entered the house. All of the doors and windows had been boarded up, but much like the fence developed holes in it, the boards found their way off of the doors and windows with the same speed and efficiency whenever there were no authority figures around to enforce trespassing laws.

Neil's house was affluent by almost any standards, but he was still in awe of what he saw before him. The entryway was enormous; it towered up three floors to the ceiling above. A long wooden stairway wrapped itself in a spiral up to a landing on the second floor and then another on the third. The effect would have been beautiful ordinarily, but the entire image was marred by the fact that almost every surface that was reachable by hand was covered in graffiti. The idea of gangs here was almost a joke, so the graffiti was free of gang markings and seemed to consist of such charming phrases as "Suck my cock, bitch" and "I fucked Emily Wilson right here".

The twins went running up the stairs, yelling like morons as they went. William, Neil and Cindy ignored them and passed through a door into what was probably, at one point, a dining room. This room was littered with beer cans, empty packs of cigarettes and the occasional used condom. (Something that William found incredibly funny and would not stop commenting about despite his companions' lack of encouragement.)

They walked through the house quietly, or rather Cindy and Neil were quiet and trying desperately to ignore Will's nonstop idiot babbling. He was speaking mostly to Cindy, trying to impress her with the inane and ridiculous bragging of exploits that undoubtedly never happened. When he did notice Neil it was with a malicious look in his eyes that seemed to say. "What the fuck are still doing here, you dumb nigger? Can't you see that I'm trying to get lucky?"

Neil ignored the looks just as he ignored the talk. He actually got a sort of grim satisfaction out of foiling William's every attempt to get Cindy alone, and the only thing he had to do so was be there. He could see the frustration slowly building up in Will; it was something that he had learned to recognize. Will had a way of blowing his top when he wasn't getting his way. It reminded Neil of when Donald Duck got angry, the red line would start at his feet and gradually work it's way up his body until it reached the top of his head and steam would erupt from his ears; causing Donald to start jumping up and down while ranting and raving in his quacking voice.

William's tantrums were humorously similar to Donald's, and Neil couldn't think of anything he'd rather have happen than for him to erupt like that and show the object of his lust exactly how immature and obnoxious he really was, if she hadn't figured it out already. The thought had already occurred to him that he was making a good friend in Cindy, a friend that he could be proud to have. Without even really looking, he had finally found a friend in town that his parents would approve of. And after only the events of the day he would dump William and the idiot twins in favor of this girl without a single regret.

His contemplation was interrupted by the sound of a crash and some yelling in a room off to the right. Thinking there was trouble, Neil sprinted off through an adjoining hallway in the direction of the noise; almost sure that someone had been hurt. He threw open a door into a smaller dining room to find that Kyle had crashed through a balcony railing and had fallen to the dining room floor below. He was rolling on the ground clutching his sides as his brother came running down the stairs laughing like a lunatic. Neil didn't even stop running as he went to his knees, sliding the last few feet to Kyle.

"Kyle!" He yelled, a little bit panicked. "Dude, are you okay?"

Kyle rolled over, his face red with laughter instead of pain. He was laughing so hard that he couldn't even catch his breath. Tears were rolling out of the side of his eyes, but to Neil it painted the illusion of someone who was seriously injured.

"Kyle, are you okay man?" Neil asked. "Come on, talk to me."

Kyle instead choked out a laugh and pointed at his brother who was laughing every bit as hard as he was.

"That was so fucking awesome." Kyle finally was able to gasp out.

Neil quickly realized what was going on. The twins had been clowning around up above and Kyle had broken through the railing. And with no more sense than he apparently had – the realization that they could have both been seriously hurt was completely lost on them. Instead, the two saw the near injury to be the peak of hilarity.

A little bit disgusted, Neil got up and left the two giggling teens behind and walked back to the empty room where he had abandoned William and Cindy.

"Sorry guys, Kyle fell over a…" Neil started but then grew silent when he saw Cindy being pushed up against the wall by William. She looked over at him; her face was a mask of abject terror. He looked further down and his eyes widened when he saw that her button-down shirt had been torn open and revealed the ivory flesh beneath.

He stared in shock for a moment before William yelled at him abusively. "You want to get the fuck out of here, asshole? We are busy."

Neil looked to Cindy whose eyes widened and her head shook imperceptibly.

Understanding what would happen if he were to walk out right now, or what would have happened had he not come back, Neil's vision suddenly became a haze of angry red. He closed the distance between William and himself not at a run, but at a casual and deliberate walk; his fists clenched beside him.

William jumped back away from Cindy and glanced around, possibly for a place to run to. (His belt was unbuckled, Neil noticed.) Not having anywhere to go he looked back in shock and horror just as Neil's fist clouted him in the side of the head. William grunted and fell to the ground, clutching his wounded ear. The shock was wearing off now and the surprise on his face was giving way to anger.

"Gonna kill you, nigger" Will said, his face a mask of hatred. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a butterfly knife and opened up the glittering silvery blade.

_He outweighs me by about fifty pounds,_ Neil thought. _If I let him get back up, he will kill me and there's not going to be a damn thing I will be able to do about it._

Rather than allow that to happen, Neil aimed another kick at Will's ribs. He connected with a meaty thud and heard all the wind leave William as he crumbled back to the floor, face down. Will looked up with his eyes bugging out, and his mouth opening and closing like a fish that had been plucked out of the lake on a fisherman's hook. His face turned apoplectic, making Neil wonder if he had broken a few of Will's ribs with that kick.

The mystery turned to certainty as Neil noticed, to his alarm, a growing pool of blood that was coming out from the bully turned gasping fish that was Will Hayes. Cindy must have seen it at the same time too, because she let out a little scream of panic and covered her mouth with both hands.

Will crumbled back to the ground and rolled into a catatonic ball, groaning as he did so. Neil, almost hyperventilating, kneeled down beside him and rolled him over with no small amount of effort. He was dimly aware that he could hear Cindy standing beside him repeating over and over her mantra of_Oh my God, Oh my God…_

Looking down at Will, Neil became immediately nauseous. The obnoxious teenage boy who was only moments ago ready to rape Cindy Kellerman was now lying on the ground with his own butterfly knife protruding from the right side of his abdomen just below his ribs. His shirt was covered in blood and something else; a black oily substance that was welling up around the knife wound.

William Hayes' eyes were fixed and unmoving, his hands curled loosely around the knife that he had impaled himself on. His chest was as still, unmoving and lifeless as the Mendel House itself had been for the last couple decades.

"Cindy" Neil heard himself say numbly. "Oh God, Cindy. I think he's dead, I think he's dead…I killed him."

Cindy let out a pinched shriek, kneeling beside Neil and sobbing. He could feel the girl's arms around him, but the only thing that was registering in his mind was William's hands clutching at the knife that ended his life. He inhaled sharply as he opened his own hands to find them covered in blood, probably from when he rolled Will onto his back.

His mind was racing; he was going to be blamed for this. It didn't matter what Cindy said, or what Will was going to do; either way, he was going to get blamed for this. Even if they just left here, the twins would say what happened and about suppertime the police would be knocking at his door and tell his parents that he killed someone. He could say it was self-defense, but was it? How could he prove that?

_I am completely fucked. _Neil thought, _the only way that I'm not going to go to jail over this is if I…_

"Run" Cindy said.

Neil looked at her, her eyes were still shell-shocked but her voice was calm. "You have to run, I don't want to see you go to jail. You kept him from hurting me."

Dimly he could hear the twins screwing around somewhere else in the house, oblivious to what was going on a floor or so below them. Cindy would tell the police what happened and paint as pretty of a picture as she could to keep him from getting into trouble. But for right now he needed to…

"Run" Cindy said. "Please."

Her eyes were pleading with him and finally he nodded to her. The two of them rushed outside and Neil started toward the fence but was caught by Cindy's hand. She turned him around and, standing on the tips of her toes, she kissed Neil on the lips. His eyes opened widely even as hers closed, he had never kissed a girl before and this one caught him completely by surprise.

When their lips parted she opened her eyes again, hurt and sorrow were evident within them. "Thank you." She said.

Neil smiled slightly, but couldn't seem to get any words out so he only nodded. He turned and crawled through the ditch running under the fence and glanced at her one last time before he got onto his bike and rode away. He would never see Cindy Kellerman again.


	9. Chapter 9 June 24th

**I**

Andrew Verner was concerned.

He had turned the television up to try to drown out the dry and raspy coughing coming from his mother's bedroom. He felt overwhelmed. The events of the past couple days seemed to crush down on him. He was winded and tired, like he was in a death march and there was no sign of stopping – only the ongoing trudging until the will of some higher power had played itself out.

He had once read a book whose name he couldn't now recall that mentioned a concept that he was currently experiencing firsthand. It was the "Hour of the Wolf", or in other words, that time in the very early hours of the morning where you stay awake and all of the anxieties and the worries of your life press in around, suffocating you. This was a concept that Andy, now awake and watching television at two in the morning, was indeed learning very well.

The house seemed to be very oppressive, in his mind. He had all the lights on and yet the house seemed dark to him, as though the very atmosphere was growing thick and gloomy around him. The walls seemed as though they were bowing in and closing around him. And what made it worse was that there was absolutely nobody he could talk to; nobody he could take his problems to.

When he had arrived back home in the late afternoon of the day before yesterday he had found, to his relief and irritation, that neither his mom nor her boyfriend had noticed that he was gone. They both simply invited him to go with them into town to pick up some McDonalds hamburgers and maybe (Gary said it as though it were a temptation that was unable to resist) they could swing by Gary's apartment and pick up his fishing poles and tackle box.

All the thinking Andy had done on the way home to concoct some story about why he had been gone overnight was totally unneeded. The two of them were so wrapped up in each other and what they were doing that they never even figured out that he had left.

Andy declined but thanked them, putting on the same shit-eating grin he was getting used to wearing to prove to his mother that life was just swell. (Eat some more shit, Andy-boy. Gulp down every single bite until it's all gone, and don't forget to smile.) He really wanted just to hide out in his room. He realized that he had responsibilities and he couldn't just run away and leave his mother wondering where he was. (That's why he came home, right? I mean, _obviously _he wouldn't have come home just because a dream about an old black woman told him to.)

Once the house was comfortably empty, he had turned on the television and watched as news story after news story mentioned the newly nicknamed "superflu epidemic" that was now sweeping everywhere. And even with all of the news coverage, there were maddeningly few details.

Every news story spent huge amounts of time talking to cap-toothed doctors with plastic hair and plastic smiles recommending on how to avoid getting sick and staying in bed and drink plenty of fluids if you do catch the flu. Yet they spent almost no time talking about any real information of value, but a few things still did manage to be made clear – national guardsmen were stationed in Los Angeles, New York City, Houston, Washington D.C. and probably other places despite the government's assurances that this was not even a dangerous strain of the flu. Air travel was being restricted inside and out of the country; the U.K. and Japan had already stopped allowing flights from the United States to land there.

It had only then occurred to him that both his mom and Gary looked considerably worse than they had the day before. Gary in particular looked pale and sickly and was constantly sneezing and coughing. Andy supposed that the drinking didn't help matters.

In fact, almost everyone that he had seen over the past two days (which wasn't all that many considering the long hours he spent locked in his bedroom,) was showing some symptom of the flu. He recalled an ambulance come screaming into town late last night, an almost unheard of occurrence since it took almost twenty-five minutes to drive there from Kingston. It stopped at John Rogers' house a block or so down the street and left with the man on a stretcher, screaming its departure out of town in just the same way that it announced its arrival.

Things became far worse a few hours ago. Andy was sitting in his room playing a game on his Playstation when he heard the front door slam. Normally he wouldn't have even responded to it, nor would his mother have even bothered to check to see if he was home. The situation was not normal, however.

He turned around when he heard his door creak open; his mother was standing there looking very much like a ghost. She was pale and her eyes had a vacant, shell-shocked appearance that was almost chilling to look at.

"Mom?" he inquired uncertainly.

"Gary" His mom started and then swallowed. "Gary is in the hospital."

Andy quickly stood up and after a moment's hesitation he hugged his mom.

"What happened?" he asked, noting the fact that she was shivering as though she were standing out in the cold.

"I dunno" she said vaguely "He was just standing there and then he fell over and started shaking."

"He was having a seizure." Andy said, sounding more like a statement than a question. .

His mom only nodded dumbly.

"Is he okay?" Andy asked after deciding his mother wasn't going to make any other reply.

She only stared at the ground mutely, wiping her runny nose with her sleeve.

"Is he going to be okay?" Andy repeated, a little bit impatiently.

"I don't know," She said tonelessly. "He's in intensive care right now, the doctor says that they should know more by tomorrow. He told me just to come back home and get some rest and a drink a lot of fluid.

"But I heard people whispering around the hospital. They are saying that a few of the people that have been coming down with this flu have been dying."

"Don't even worry about that mom." Andy said, trying not to think of John Rogers down the street. "They just mean old people. Its old people that are usually dying of the flu…Gary's not that old, he will be fine."

Listlessly, and looking as though she wasn't even hearing him, Andy's mother turned around and walked back out of the room without speaking a word. Andy listened to the sound of her sneezing and making several deep and wet sounding coughs on the way to her bedroom. He could hear her door close with a faint and declamatory click.

Mentally, he gave himself a quick evaluation. He felt perfectly fine, not even so much as a runny nose and that seemed to put him in the definite minority around this house and even the town. An outcast again, go figure. The macabre irony was not lost on Andy, however, he was more than happy to be the only one in town who had not fallen ill.

**II**

And so here was where Andy found himself, the only healthy person in his household and channel surfing between the ever so unhelpful news broadcast and Seinfeld reruns. He did not consider himself to be the smartest person in the world, but he definitely didn't consider himself to be stupid. It was obvious to him from the news that the world was starting to fall down around him. Well…maybe not falling down around him, but becoming distinctly unsettled at the least.

Andy looked over at the coffee table and spied a paper with a mug sitting on top of it. He removed the mug, a large, dried ring of spilled coffee left behind in its place. Picking up the paper he peered at the neat orderly lines of Times New Roman script. It was a poem entitled "O You Ancient Ones" by a man he had never heard of, A. S. Maulucci. He scanned through the first paragraph mildly curious, but it was the second that caught his interest.

_And when the time comes,_

_you ancient ones can teach me how to die._

_Stones of the river, make me weep_

_with your stories of suffering._

_From you I would learn endurance._

_And you flowers, _

_what is the secret of your gentle end?_

_You can tell me_

_how to let go of the sunlight._

_Jesus,_ Andy thought, _who would write such depressing shit?_

Andy was immediately beginning to wish that he had never picked up the paper, the barely suppressed anxiety he had been feeling all evening and into the night suddenly rolled against his heart like a stone. He dropped the paper with its ring of brown back onto the table and watched it for a moment reproachfully before trying to return his attention to the television.

_What the hell is that thing even doing on the table?_ Andy thought, considering. _My mom doesn't read poetry._

The idea then occurred to him that just maybe it was Gary who was reading the poetry. The though struck him as odd, it made him see the greasy-haired pony tailed man in a different light. This brought on an even more disturbing thought; was it possible that he, Andy Verner, was judging people based on nothing other than their outward appearance and mannerisms?

He tried to push this thought out of his head; he didn't want to believe that he was doing to someone else the exact same thing that the other teenagers of Pratt Lake did to him. It was almost a physical blow to him, the feeling that he was capable of treating other people just the way that he resented being treated.

Yet as much as he tried to push the though away from him, it remained there; just like the disquieting poem that was lying there on the table glaring at him. In a mostly symbolic gesture, he reached over to the table and turned the poem over; the coffee stain had soaked through the paper and on the backside was it's muted brown mirror image.

_You can tell me how to let go of the sunlight. _Andy thought, wishing to himself that the sun were out right now. Somehow the sun just seemed to make the worst of situations just a little bit better. It couldn't keep his mom from being sick, and it couldn't prevent his life from sucking, but for Christ's sakes; at least it would be bright out there. At least the only source of light outside wouldn't be the pair of (eyes) motion sensor lights across the street (looking for him) that looked like headlights driving down the driveway toward his house.

He flipped through channels searching for any kind of news that wasn't giving the same sterile, homogenized garbage that the first few channels provided. He stopped for a moment on a religious channel, which informed him that the apocalypse was coming and the only way he could escape it was through the grace of Jesus Christ.

_This is it, I'm in Hell. There's no way that this could possibly get any worse. _Andy though.

Just then the phone started ringing. Andy looked up at the clock and saw that it was almost three in the morning. Phone calls at three in the morning almost never bode well.

Andy answered the phone and found that things can indeed get worse.


	10. Chapter 10

_Amazing Grace how sweet the sound _

_that saved a wretch like me._

_I once was lost but now I'm found_

_was blind but now I see._

Floyd Wilks found his surroundings to be too surreal, too absurd to be anything but a dream. Surely he was lying in his bed at home, and that this whole thing was all brought on by stress. He had to watch out for THE STRESS his doctor had told him, he wasn't any spring chicken anymore and the last thing he wanted to do was to give himself a heart attack. He would feel the crushing pain in his chest or maybe his shoulder and before he knew it he would be kicking the bucket, buying the farm, pushing up daisies. THE STRESS would do that to him, he had to make sure he kept that blood pressure down.

He wasn't a hypochondriac to be sure. However, Floyd had made the near instantaneous decision that something was fundamentally wrong with him when he went to sleep in his bed and found himself awakened in a cornfield. Not that he felt like anything was wrong; quite the contrary, aside from standing in the middle of someone's farm wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, he felt better than he had in twenty years.

He could hear the music, a droning but pleasant voice off to his left accompanied by the strum of a guitar. He cautiously started walking in that direction, almost positive that he had finally snapped, that he was going mad.

Is this how it happens? He wondered. Is this the kind of world people with the Alzheimer's live in? To them they are in this nice happy place, but to everyone on the outside they have just gone totally batshit insane?

If this was a dream, it was the most real dream he had ever experienced in his life. And that wasn't saying all that much, Floyd very rarely remembered his dreams, not since he was a very small boy. He dimly recalled that he was prone to nightmares. That he would have to run to his parents' room once or twice a week and climb under their covers. _Floyd had another scary dream _his mom would say and they would all go back to sleep.

This didn't feel like any scary dream though. In fact, nothing about it felt particularly unpleasant in the slightest. To his mind, this entire place was one of the most idyllic settings he could imagine, it made him almost have pangs of regret of what could have been, the places he could have retired rather than live out his remaining years in cold-assed northern Ohio.

A warm evening breeze blew through the cornfield. Floyd could see the stalks, heavy with corn, rippling and bowing in the gentle wind. He walked toward the music; his hands stretched forward probing like a blind man parted from his cane, clearing a swath of cornstalks out of his way as he trudged on ahead. Still the singing continued on, growing louder with each step.

_When we've been there ten-thousand years_

_Bright shining as the sun_

_We've no less days to sing God's praise_

_Than when we first begun_

Finally and without warning, the cornfield in front of him seems to just disappear. He walked through what appeared almost like a solid wall of corn and then out into about twenty feet of (he thought) poorly maintained grass that ended with the front porch of an old single-story farmhouse.

An old black woman, wizened with a faint fluff of white hair on the top of her head stopped singing and set aside her guitar when she saw him approaching. A bright and inviting smile spread out across the canvas of her bespectacled face as he approached in an almost dreamlike daze.

"Hello Floyd" she said. "What kept you?"

Uncertain how to respond, or even what to respond he pointed back behind him gape-mouthed for a moment.

"The corn" he said. "I lost my way in the corn…how do you know my name?"

And then a more important thought came to him before she could reply. "Am I dead?"

"You aren't dead, Floyd. Praise God!" she replied.

"If I'm not dead, where am I. Is this a dream?" Floyd asked, a little confused.

"Mayhap it is, and mayhap it ain't." The old woman said, grinning impishly. "This is Hemingford Home, Nebraska and folks around these parts call me Mother Abigail. You are going to need to come and see me soon, Floyd, you and all your friends."

"I don't understand…" Floyd started but Mother Abigail interrupted him. And it seemed to him at once that the sky was growing dark above him at an alarmingly fast pace.

"Nightfall is coming soon! You best get here before night falls for good!" She said and then pointed behind him at the corn.

Floyd turned around and noticed with alarm that large black storm clouds were directly over him, bright flashes of lightning arcing back and forth between the thunderheads. The wind was now blowing through the corn with gale intensity. Shaken, he turned back to the old woman to ask her what was going on but behind him there was nothing but corn. He turned again in a circle, panic welling up within him, but he found himself completely surrounded by corn on all sides.

"Mother Abigail?" he asked tentatively, but the only reply was a loud peal of thunder directly above him.

Trying to keep calm he started walking back in the opposite direction from which the storm had come in, the rational parts of his mind telling him that the farmhouse must be there in the corn somewhere and all he needed to do was to find it. In forced calmness, he walked quickly; he didn't want to run, knowing that the moment he started to run the panic was going to take control.

He kept circling around to look behind him. No matter what direction his back was facing he was almost positive that there was someone directly behind him. It felt like a queer and uneasy pressure that was right on the back of his shoulders; it felt like someone was watching him, it felt like someone was standing right behind him and grinning at him.

He could feel the anxiety building, he could feel THE STRESS building and finally it became too much for him. Floyd turned around and yelled, "Who's there?" into the howling wind that was beating down on the cornfield.

He got no reply and was just about to chide himself for being so irrational when two hands slammed down hard on his shoulders, bringing him down to his knees. Wide eyed he looked over and saw one of the two hands resting just to the side of his neck. They were horribly disfigured claws with long dirty nails. He tried desperately to scramble away, but those terrible hands were holding him in a death-like grip.

**II**

Floyd was on the ground, clawing at the wood beneath his hands and feet. He could hear a noise, not quite a scream but more like a high-pitched moaning. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was emanating from deep within his own throat. It took him a few seconds longer to realize that he was lying on the floor of his bedroom, soaked in sweat with the morning sunlight poring in through the bedroom window.

He suddenly stopped thrashing about, feeling more than a little bit absurd about his current situation. He was relieved that there was nobody in the room to poke fun at his childish reaction to what was nothing more than a little bad dream, a dream no doubt caused by THE STRESS of dealing with his son being sick right before a big air show.

He gradually got to his feet, every single joint in his body creaking with the exertion. He could smell breakfast being cooked in the kitchen downstairs, bacon and potatoes were the aromas he could identify readily; Amanda was an amazing girl. While Derek had grown steadily worse throughout the evening, Amanda jumped into action doing every single function that was needed to care for her fiancée and compensate for his illness.

Sure enough, as he got dressed and walked down the stairs he found her busily cooking eggs, bacon and hash browns in the kitchen. But even more shocking was that Derek was up and around, sitting at the table and drinking a glass of orange juice. He looked drained and pale, with bright circles of color high on his cheeks; but otherwise he looked like he might be getting over this bug he'd caught.

"Hi dad" Derek said, his voice was toneless and tired.

"I didn't expect to see you up today, not with how you were doing last night." Floyd said. This was a bit of an understatement seeing that only eight or so hours earlier, Floyd was ready to take Derek to the emergency room after his fever peaked at 103.8 degrees and was not showing any signs of letting up. But much to his relief, the fever broke right around midnight and they both were able to sleep peacefully through the night.

"I still feel pretty bad, but I think I might be out of the woods, Amanda's chicken noodle soups seems to have this thing on the run." Derek said, sharing a private smile with his girlfriend.

Amanda smiled back and continued cooking, stopping for a moment to grab a tissue out of the Kleenex box on the counter and sneeze into it a couple times. She caught Floyd looking at her worriedly and shrugged, smiling.

"It's okay Floyd, I'm not coming down with it." She said. "It's just my allergies."

Floyd wasn't so sure, she was getting a flushed look about her that he was finding alarming. She was a little bit worried herself, her parents were stranded on their vacation with air travel to and from the islands of Hawaii being suspended because of the flu epidemic, they were unsure exactly when they would be able to come home. Amanda's mother had talked to him the day before, she herself had sounded like she was developing a bad case of the flu, and told him that she was very sorry about all of this and that they would be home as soon as they possibly could.

Predictably, Floyd told them that it was okay and not to hurry on his account.

"After breakfast" Floyd started right before Amanda plopped a plate down right in front of him which him that he immediately started to douse with Tabasco sauce. "After breakfast I'm going to head on over to the market and pick up some stuff. Is there anything that I can get you?"

Derek nodded, his voice still sounding weak and congested. "Get some Nyquil or something, anything that will help me sleep better tonight. Last night sucked."

Yes, Floyd agreed, yes it did.

**III**

The drug store was a complete nightmare, Floyd watched with horror at the chaos that was taking place in front of him. Everyone in the store except him seemed to be exhibiting some stage of flu-like symptoms. The stores patrons all were acting universally disagreeable and irritated, not that he blamed them, that's pretty much how he felt when he was sick.

The store itself looked like it had been picked over and cleaned out pretty well. Either that or they hadn't gotten a delivery of new merchandise in a few days. Maybe it was both. The pharmaceutical section was the area that looked like it had been hardest hit; everything that was even remotely useful in treating colds or the flu had long since been picked up off of the shelves. Even the homeopathic remedies which were only slightly more useful than taking nothing at all were long gone.

Floyd gave a cursory expression at the shelves, looking around for anything at all that might be useful for easing his son's (and maybe his daughter-in-law's) symptoms. Just when he thought that the ransacked shelves had nothing to offer him he spied a box of Tylenol PM pushed back to the end of a shelf and completely overlooked. He grabbed the box and walked for the front of the store, keeping the small box of medicine concealed – he watched two people get into a shoving match over something as innocuous as a bottle of ginger ale.

Even more surreal, he stood at the check stand for almost ten minutes waiting for the cashier to come up and check him out, but nobody ever showed up. During this time he watched a coughing man walk out the door with a shopping cart full of groceries. Floyd had opened his mouth to ask the man if he had intended to pay for those, but then closed it. Things were seriously not right in the world.

Frustrated, he reached into his wallet and pulled out six dollars. He set the money on the counter and walked out with the medicine in hand. He was sure that someone would steal the money, most likely before he had even gotten out of the parking lot, but at least his conscience would be clear in the fact that he was not a thief.

His walk back to the car was interrupted when he noticed that a man was sitting in an idling car parked next to his. He knew this man too; he was the guy that manned the flight shop counter at the Kent airport. He didn't know him very well, but they had a few decent conversations over the years. And now he was slumped over the steering wheel in the car with the windows down and Tom Petty blaring out of the car stereo.

Floyd cautiously walked up. The man made no movement but the sound of his raspy, labored breathing was audible even over the music.

"Mark?" Floyd asked, he scanned his recollection for the airport clerk's last name and came up empty.

"Mark?" he said a little bit louder, reaching in and pushing the power button on the car stereo. The irritatingly loud music cut off leaving the more disturbing sound of a man's dying breaths.

Floyd held his hand out, at first he had intended to tap the man on the shoulder, to try to get his attention and possibly see if he needed someone to call him an ambulance. But instead he slowly withdrew his hand from the car. Yet just as he started to do so, the man sprung to life and grasped Floyd's wrist in his hand.

The grip was damp and sweaty, yet strong enough the Floyd couldn't pull his hand free. In terror he looked to Mark, who was now grinning up at his with a delirious fire in his eyes.

"He's coming for you Floyd, the darkman, the hardcase…" Mark said, his mouth stretching into a lunatic grin.

Floyd lunged back and broke free of the sweaty and diseased hand that was grabbing onto him. He turned and started running only turning around when he heard the screeching of tires behind him.

He turned around wide eyed and saw Mark's Chevy fly backwards and slam into the parked car on the other side of the aisle. Floyd took a few steps backward, certain that Mark was going to now throw the car into gear and drive after him, to run him down. But mark just lay there slumped over the steering wheel, the horn blaring. His left hand hung out of the window sliding back and forth across the door like a pendulum.

Floyd turned and ran. Screw the car, he thought, it's only a ten minute walk to get home.


	11. Chapter 11 June 25th

**I**

Peter Hague was surrounded by something that he had not experienced in years beyond memory, something that he had wanted ever since some time in June of 1982. This thing he had longed for but didn't dare hope for lest he go out of his mind in misery. It was a thing that money couldn't buy him; it was a thing that couldn't have been given to him except due to a little twist in fate that went by the name of Captain Trips.

That thing that he longed for was complete and total silence.

He married his wife in a pleasant little outdoor ceremony here in his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi during the summer of 1982. The sun was shining and the temperature was just right, it was as though God himself had decided to shine down upon the soon to be mister and missus Hague. It was a happy day.

Which was just as well, because he didn't have all that many happy ones after that. All too quickly the new husband found that the little quirks and idiosyncrasies that seem so charming to a couple dating could be downright grating after marriage. Chief among Peter Hague's complaints was the fact that his wife Georgia would Never…Stop…Talking.

It was incessant, from sunup to sundown every day she would talk about this and that, often about nothing at all. She would comment on the weather, on politics, on the weeds growing in the neighbor's yard, on the weeds growing in their own yard, she would talk about the scorch marks left on a tortilla after taking it off of the griddle; _Peter, look at this tortilla, doesn't the mark on it look just like Nevada?_

He had laughingly wondered while they were dating whether or not his dear girlfriend had ever had any thought that she didn't immediately vocalize. Now after twenty years of marriage he was damned sure that she had not. Sometimes it got so bad that he just imagined her as a huge, overgrown mosquito that was whining in the most irritating way possible right in his ear. Sometimes it was so bad that he was sure that he would be driven insane.

All of this might not have been so bad except for the fact that Peter's favorite pastime was to sit in a large and comfortable chair with a good book in his lap. He could lose himself inside of a good story for hours, the real world around him fading away. Unfortunately for him, he was a very easily distracted fellow and was not able to read except in complete, or near complete silence.

Peter was certain that he had not read more than two pages in peace in twenty years.

During those passing seasons he had been beaten down. What had started as anxiety attacks and one hell of a painful peptic ulcer slowly settled down to a reluctant acceptance of his lot in life. The Hague family was devoutly Catholic. The Hague family did not get divorces.

So rather than completely lose his mind and commit suicide, or strangle his wife to death out of sheer desperation (An act that he was absolutely sure she would talk through until the final gasp of air departed through her incessantly flapping mouth.); Peter instead just learned to deal with it; acceptance did for him what all the Zantac in the world couldn't. He politely listened to all of his wife's irrelevant stories and meaningless ravings without complaint. In fact, he was so good at it that he seriously doubted if she had ever known how absolutely unhappy his predicament made him.

When Georgia Hague started to get sick early in the third week of June, she thought it was just a mild case of the flu. This didn't make her stupid, even her doctor thought it was a minor case of the flu. She was never neglected; her husband took care of her and doted upon her as she grew gradually worse and worse, talking all the way.

And then when she died on the afternoon of the 21st, her husband cried bitterly; because deep down, despite her failings, Peter Hague really did love his wife. He had her sent to the mortuary where despite a "heavier than normal workload" (the funeral director dramatically understated); he would have Georgia embalmed and ready for the funeral by the weekend.

Feeling numb and overwhelmed; Peter drove home and just sat in his chair, looking out the window in shock. He was so used to spending all of his free time listening to his wife's droning that now that she was gone, he didn't have any idea what he should be doing with his time. Worse, it took him almost an hour to figure out that that almost deafening roar in his ears wasn't a sound at all, but rather the complete lack of it.

The shock eventually wore off though, and he started to realize how much he enjoyed that lack of sound. He thought back into his hazy memories to a time that he would spend countless hours within this mystifying silence, doing nothing but reading book after book. And after getting himself a snack and a glass of ice water, he did something that he hadn't done in a very, very long time. Peter walked up to a bookcase and picked up the copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ that he had abandoned out of frustration twenty years ago.

II 

It didn't take Peter long to regain his affection for the written word; and by the time dinner rolled around, he had already work his way through almost two hundred pages. Once again he found himself out of his drab and purgatorial life and suddenly he was plunged into Charles Dickens' epic novel about the French Revolution. He honestly didn't think he could be any happier.

For more than a day and a half Peter sat in that chair chewing his way through page after page of the book, completely oblivious to the world around him. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he was aware of the sounds of ambulances, sirens and general unrest coming from the world outside his house. But that world was irrelevant to him, the only unrest he was conscious of was that which was occurring in the 18th century France that dwelled in his imagination.

Outside, the sirens and gunshots slowly dwindled away as the world began spiraling in on its climax. And inside Peter's head, the Reign of Terror played itself out toward it's own eventual climax.

There was something though, a sound that started out almost imperceptible. It was definitely far too quiet to intrude on the wall of solitude that Peter Hague had built around his mind, keeping in the world of literary excellence in his head and keeping out the things that didn't matter…which was pretty much everything.

The sound grew louder though; and by the time Charles Darnay began his final walk up to the guillotine, it had grown loud enough to pierce through the mental barrier that Mr. Hague had erected around himself. He sat bolt upright, turning his head from side to side in an attempt to zero the noise's location.

It was shrill and disconcerting, and reminded him all too much of his deceased wife. It actually reminded him of a very loud mosquito, a mosquito whose sound had been modified by an electric guitar's wah-wah pedal. He couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed it before; it was a sound that made his eyes want to water and his mouth to pucker up.

He slowly stood up, thoughts of the Bastille and the lamentable Lucie Manette quickly fading from his mind. He dropped the book into his chair and walked through the house and out of the screen door to the back porch. The sound was even louder out there and was coming from somewhere in the swamp directly behind his property.

Peter looked around, hoping that maybe it wasn't just him, hoping that maybe one or two of his neighbors were outside looking around maybe whispering amongst themselves; _Good God, what is that noise?_ But everything appeared to be deserted, there wasn't anyone outside checking on the state of affairs, no cars driving up and down the street.

_What has happened? _Peter Hague thought. _Where has everyone gone?_

The only noise apart from the awful whining was the leaves rustling in the trees. Just the trees; no birds were singing in their branches. There wasn't even the sound of insects droning in the early summer heat and humidity. If the trees knew the answers to his questions, they didn't offer it.

He walked off of his property and into the swamp, feeling the spongy earth beneath his bare feet. He had briefly considered going back to the house to get his shoes, he had no interest in pulling leeches out from beneath his toes, to say nothing of having to run from any alligator he might encounter in the swamps. But he decided against it, the quicker he figured out what it was making that noise, the quicker he could deal with it and get back to his story.

It had occurred to him that he might just be losing his mind. Without the sound of his wife's omnipresent banter, what passed for the brain of Pete Hague had simply snapped and he was inventing a new and irritating sound to fill the void left by the old and irritating one.

He tried to dismiss this thought as he wandered further and further into the swamp, if he was going crazy then he had no desire to think about it. He froze in place once, like a cat about to spring, when he heard the low and deep rumbling of an alligator somewhere close by. He relaxed and kept moving again once he was certain that it was nowhere near him. And more importantly, it was moving in the other direction.

He had walked only a few steps further and froze when he caught sight of what was making the racket. It was like nothing he had ever seen, there was a pool of something lying on the ground, no bigger than the circumference of a bicycle tire. It was green and luminescent, it almost appeared to be swelling and writhing in front of him.

He had seen peat fires before and that was originally what he had thought this was, but it couldn't be. For one there was no smoke, nothing to give any sign that something was combusting right in front of his eyes. But even if there was, no fire gave off a sound like that.

The pitch of the sound increased slightly for a moment and he was suddenly aware that, while he still didn't like the sound, he no longer found it to be quite as irritating as it was only a few moments before. In fact, while the noise still reminded him of his wife, it suddenly made him start to remember her good qualities. He remembered her singing in church; he remembered the lovely and almost heart-breakingly beautiful voice that she had.

Peter stood there mesmerized by the green glow, he thought it was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen in his life but somehow he couldn't quiet force himself to take his eyes off of it. And that sound, it seemed almost like it was beckoning to him, that it was calling him to come closer. And perhaps it was.

_Join us, Peter Hague. _It almost seemed to speak to him. _Join us and live in the wonderful silence of nothingness forever. This world is fading and the thinny will welcome you into its arm. Join us, Peter Hague._

"Oh yes" Peter mumbled, his slackened face staring at the green glow with longing now instead of revulsion. He found himself stepping forward, one foot after another in dream-like daze. The thinny's song promised him everything that he could possibly want, it promised him endless solitude. It promised him his dead wife.

In his last moments, Peter regained some clarity, albeit too late. Just as he fell forward through the rift in reality he realized that there was nothing there but oblivion. His last thought was of Charles Darnay walking to his death, just as willingly as he had walked into his own.


	12. Chapter 12

**I**

_"Doctor Herbert Denninger, epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta commented on Thursday that while this outbreak of swine flu is dangerous, it is by no means as lethal as many reports would suggest. He called once more for anyone who is infected to stay home, get bed rest and drink plenty of fluids. He also gave his assurance that a vaccine is being worked on and should be available in major US cities no later than the middle of next week._

_"In the two days since then, there have been no official statements from the federal government concerning the Superflu outbreak. However, there have been unconfirmed reports that…"_

Andrew sat up from the couch he was lounging on; taking note that the newscaster from Knoxville was speaking but no sound was coming out. The video feed went on only a moment longer and then the television station went to a multicolored test screen. He grabbed the remote and switched between the other three channels that were available in Lake Pratt to those that didn't have a satellite dish. On one of them was an old episode of Happy Days; on the other two were test screens much like the one coming out of WKNX channel 13.

He felt numb, not sad, just numb. The call that he had gotten early the morning before was the hospital in Kingston calling to say that Gary was dead. They said that his cause of death was flu-related septic shock. He thanked the nurse (why did he thank her? He didn't know, it just seemed like the right thing to say) and just stood there with the phone, not hanging it up until it started to beep the shrill off-hook signal.

He returned the cordless phone to its charger and stood there wondering if he should tell his mom that her boyfriend was dead. In the end he decided not to. Amy Verner was sick with the flu, and her son was pretty certain that in her state she wouldn't be able to understand him anyway. Everything was too surreal, it seemed as though he should be waking up from a bad dream any moment. Surely that's what it was, his mom and Gary were fine just the other day. It was unthinkable that Gary would be dead and his mom dying.

And he was fairly sure that his mom was dying. Her condition had only worsened as the sun came up and unless there was a dramatic change of events, Andy was sure that she would be gone before the sun dropped down below the mountains this evening. Possibly much sooner than that.

He felt horribly isolated. The phones were down, the news on television didn't give any real news except for a dose of the federal "don't worries" and a grim sense that the world was coming to an end somewhere outside of his forgotten little home town. He wanted to get out of town and see what was going on but he wasn't going to leave his mom…not while she was still alive.

He dealt with his feeling of helplessness by cleaning. After he got the call telling him that all of the dread he was feeling over his fishing trip with Gary was officially moot, he grabbed a cloth and just started to clean the house. A beer can here, an empty pizza box there, anything he could find to do to keep from thinking too much.

My mother is almost comatose, breathing her last breaths…Don't think about it, those windows over there need cleaning; and don't forget to go outside and hose off the driveway.

Fucking 911 isn't answering the phone, everyone has forgotten about us… Don't think about it, just vacuum the carpets and clean up the stains that have been there since before you can remember.

Soon…Very soon I'm going to start coughing and sneezing, and then I'm going to die here alone… And no matter what, don't think about that. The bathroom hasn't been cleaned in more than a year. Scrub those tiles until they sparkle, and the shower too.

"Kevin!" He heard his mom shout.

Wide eyed, Andy dropped the toilet brush into the toilet with a "plop" and ran into his mom's bedroom. She was sitting upright and for just a moment he didn't really believe that the grotesque corpselike thing on the bed was his mother at all. She was gaunt and had easily lost over ten pounds from the disease that was killing her. She looked at him deliriously, her face a mask of anger and disgust.

"Kevin! How many goddamned times do I have to tell you, clean your fuckin' beer bottles up off of the floor." She raved, almost incoherently. "Gonna make me fall and break my neck, fuckin' asshole."

His mom's state simultaneously disgusted Andy and broke his heart. "Dad's not here mom…just me."

Her eyes seemed to show recognition for a moment. Not quite clarity, but something close to it. She nodded once and then fell back to her pillow, continuing to ramble to herself. Andy walked over and kneeled down on the floor beside the bed and took his mom's hand. It was frail and worn, too much drugs and alcohol along with too hard of a life had given his mother the hands of a woman that was at least thirty years older than she actually was.

Andy didn't really hate his mother. He realized that it wasn't that she didn't care about him; she was just the best mother that she knew how to be. He couldn't fault her for doing her best, even if her best came up short most of the time. He bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain would drive away the tears that were starting to well up around his eyes.

He was unsuccessful.

His mother did not speak again as he sat there clutching at her hand for the next forty-five minutes with tears streaming down his face. There was nothing dramatic about her death, just her chest rose one final time and she exhaled one final noisy time and then nothing. Despite his best effort, one enormous sob escaped through his mouth as he stood up, still holding his mother's hand.

He squeezed it one last time and then bent over and kissed it before folding the hand atop her chest. Quietly, he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

**II**

Andy had wanted to hope that the world would regain some semblance of sanity, that all he would have to do was to wait and eventually someone would come and set things right again, to tell him what he was supposed to do. But for good or bad, Andrew Verner was a realist; he was more than aware that the world as he (or anyone else) had known it was pretty much finished. The two bodies laying in the middle of the street a few houses away were a testament to that even if his dead mother was not.

Because of this realism, he knew that if he didn't bury his own mother, then she would simply rot in her bed. He had no interest in seeing that happen, he thought that maybe he had been too hard on his mom, perhaps. She was not a good mother, but she did the best that she could for him with the resources she had. As he thought about her he remembered things that he supposed he had conveniently forgotten over the years, like the time that his mom was working three jobs just to make sure that he was fed and clothed. Or the time that she had driven him to the emergency room in Kingston, speeding down the old country roads like a bolt of lighting, because he had a hundred and five degree fever.

Would someone who just didn't care have done either of these things? Andrew Verner didn't think so.

When you want someone to blame for how your life is, it's easy to find someone even if they aren't totally responsible. And here, as Andy stood over his mother lying in the grave that he had dug for her, he regretted that he didn't tell her that he loved her one more time while she was still alive to hear it.

"I love you mom." He said. Somehow it just didn't sound enough.

He picked up his shovel and stared down into the hole, while tears soundlessly washed down his face. He found that the first shovelful of dirt was the hardest, but after that it became a little bit easier. And once all traced of his mother were now obscured from his sight, he could push from his mind the grisly task he was performing and maybe pretend that he was just filling in a hole with dirt.

When it was over, he hosed both his hands and the shovel off and turned to walk back into the house before realizing that going back in there was about the last thing he wanted to do at that moment. Instead he decided just to take a walk. It was still a few hours before nightfall and he figured that the air might clear his head a little bit, at least enough that he could figure out what he was supposed to do now.

He didn't have any intention of going down to the lake, not consciously anyway, but that's where his walk eventually took him. His dream from a few nights ago temporarily forgotten, he noticed how peaceful the water looked. The afternoon air was still and the surface of the lake was like a perfect mirror. He could see the perfect reflection of the mountains within the water and above them, the clouds.

Suddenly, the mirror of the water was shattered as a rock broke the surface right in the spot he was staring. Ripples spread out away from the impact, fragmenting the perfect reflection in ever-growing concentric rings.

Startled, Andy looked about and noticed that there was someone sitting down in a stand of reeds not far from where he was. He walked over; mostly expecting to see someone who had come to the river to play out the final stages of the flu, possibly drown him or herself in a fever-induced delirium.

This is why he was shocked to find Samantha Mackenzie throwing rocks into the water. Her face was tear-streaked, her eyes puffy and red, but otherwise she looked to be completely healthy. Although standing only a few feet away from her, she gave no indication that she was aware of his presence. She only sat on the shore watching the water with her head resting on her knees.

Her appearance was disheveled, her hair was unbrushed and she wasn't wearing makeup like she normally did. She went to such extremes to cover up her freckles, so much that he couldn't recall seeing her without her makeup on in a few years, pretty much since she started to hate him. Even so, he couldn't help but feel pity for her, regardless of how mean she had been. She looked tired and beaten down, it didn't occur to Andy that he probably looked pretty much the same way to her.

He was just about to say something to her, when she broke the silence for him.

"What do you want?" She said. None of her usual anger or disgust was there, she just sounded sad and broken.

He opened his mouth to respond, but there wasn't any answer he could think of that didn't sound stupid. After a moment's silence he just told the truth. "Nothing. I was just out taking a walk."

"You aren't sick?" She asked tonelessly, there was almost a heartbreaking hopefulness to her voice.

"Nope." Andy said, standing beside her, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

"Why not?" She asked, he could feel the tension building in her voice. The question sounded ridiculous, but then again, the situation was ridiculous.

"I don't know, I just didn't catch it." He said, then changing to subject. "Look, Samantha… are you okay?"

"No" she said, looking up at him. Her eyes flashed angrily and her voice had taken a sarcastic ring to it. "Why the fuck would I be okay."

"I don't know." Andy said. "I was just…" he didn't know how to end the sentence. What was he? Worried? Concerned? Hoping?

Andy realized that the conversation was not exactly going well and he raised his hands and tried to apologize to Sam, to tell her it was okay, but she wasn't going to have it. She was angry and there was nobody for her to take it out on except for the dead. Well, the dead and one teenaged boy that she had taken so much abuse out on before, so why stop now?

"Why the fuck should anything be okay?" She asked, standing up, advancing on him.

"My mom and dad are both dead, my sisters are dead. Everyone in my life is dead except you." She continued, her voice getting louder and more hysterical as she went. "Why are you still alive? Why couldn't my dad be here? why is it that the people I care about are gone and you are still here, you freak!"

Samantha angrily took a wild swing with her open hand at Andy, who jumped back away from her. The sobbing girl, thrown off-balance by the clumsy haymaker, half fell and half collapsed to the ground covering up her hands with her head. A frog that she had nearly fallen on leapt away toward the safety of the lake while Samantha, chest heaving, wailed in misery.

Andy kneeled down beside the girl, unsure of what to do. Part of him, the vicious part, wanted to pile every bit of grief she had ever given him on top of the hurt she was already feeling. That horrible part wanted to tell her; see? Now you're life is fucked up too, how does it feel? Not very good, huh?

Every time he had thoughts like that though, he thought back to years past. He thought back to the girl who was now sobbing on the ground laughing while the two of them ran through the sprinkler in front of her house. It was almost hard to believe, he thought, how that only happened about four years ago; back before Samantha had turned on him the way she did. Back before Samantha had sacrificed their friendship to the twin gods of popularity and acceptance.

Although Andy hated to admit it, even to himself, he still liked the girl and wanted more than anything to be her friend again. Maybe now, without the driving need to impress anyone…

Andy gently laid his hand on Samantha's shoulder, on the bare skin uncovered by her tank top. Still crying, she shrugged it off as though his touch burned her skin. He waited, hesitating for a moment, and then he put his hand back; this time in the middle of her back, pressing just light enough for her to know that he was still there with her. Although he was expecting her to shrink away from him again, she didn't. She just stayed there crying and letting out the pain that she had held bottled up since the first of her family had died the day before.

She will be okay. Andy thought. I'm not going anywhere until she is.

**III**

The sun had made its final dive to the horizon and crashed down beneath it before the two of them spoke again. Sam was now sitting beside Andy, her tear-streaked face now also covered with smudges of dirt from the ground she was crying into a couple hours earlier. For the last half hour or so, they had settled into a companionable silence. Both of them watched the lake and the sunset beyond it as the fading light of the dimmed, an inch at a time.

It was Samantha that broke the silence first. She didn't turn toward him, but her voice was even and controlled again, a far cry from her state when Andy had first found her.

"I'm sorry." She said.

Andy shrugged and nodded, his eyes studying the upside-down landscape laid out upon the surface of the water. "It's okay." He said. "Last few days have sucked pretty bad for me too."

"No." she replied, shaking her head. "I'm sorry for the way I treat you. If I were in your shoes, I would have told me to go fuck off. I'm a bitch, and I would deserve it."

Andy said nothing; he was ashamed to admit that he had seriously considered doing just that.

"We used to be friends, and…" Sam started and then fell silent.

Andy looked over at her and saw the emotional war that was going on in her head, her face betraying every horrible thing that she wished she could do over and make right again. And again that little ugly side of him relished the pain that she was in, it enjoyed that the torment she so eagerly thrust upon him was causing her misery. He could torture her with this for months, or…

Andy put his hand on Samantha's shoulder and smiled at her. It was what she needed, he saw the emotional turmoil in her eyes stop; with that one familiar touch and a smile, he had absolved her of the crimes she had committed against him.

"It's okay. I don't care." He said, and then it occurred to him: "how about we both just start over as friends again?"

Sam just nodded gratefully, her smile expanded into the one that Andy remembered from boyhood; it was the smile that he liked so much about her.

"Andy?" Sam asked. "I don't want to be a bother, but can I sleep on your couch tonight?"

He could see the shadow of emotion clouding over her face again, threatening once more to overwhelm her with the gravity of the last week. "It's just… My family, they are all… I don't know what I'm supposed to…"

Andy squeezed her shoulder. "It's okay. I don't really much like the idea of being by myself either. If you want my help, I will help you to…bury your family tomorrow."

Sam looked down at the ground for a long moment and then nodded wordlessly. Adversity does strange things; four years of dislike and hurt had disappeared in the mutual need for companionship and comfort.

**IV**

Andy and Samantha sat on the couch watching the television. The only station that was broadcasting now was the one that was earlier running an episode of Happy Days, only now they were playing Magnum P.I., the other two stations were still displaying a test pattern and had been the entire time he was gone, for all Andy knew.

Samantha was wearing an oversized, voluminous t-shirt of Andy's. She didn't relish the idea of going into her house to get some clothes in the dark with the corpses of her dead family inside to greet her. So instead she sat wearing the shirt, her knees up and cradled underneath her chin with the shirt pulled down over them, cocooning her within the stretched fabric. Only the gaily-painted lavender of her toenails was visible peeking out through the bottom.

On the television screen, Tom Selleck brought to them a world that was outside of the grim reality they were now a part of. It was comforting, at least for a little while it made their problems and anxieties seem not so suffocating. At least twice the pair laughed and looked at each other, smiling. The situation was pretty far from ideal, but they were both grateful that they weren't facing it alone.

After the show was over, they argued good-naturedly over what DVD Andy was going to put in. They settled on a movie named Big Fish, one of Andy's mother's movies. He had never seen it, but Sam assured him that he would like it.

She turned out to be right, but at this point he would have been happy just watching anything. They watched movie after movie into the night, it was as though the DVD player was capable of bringing them into another world, rather than bringing another world to them. It whisked them away to a place where they could just enjoy each other's company and not worry about what would come tomorrow, or the next day; if only for a couple hours.

Finally Andy noticed that she had fallen asleep. He glanced over and saw that she had curled up at the other end of the couch into a defensive ball. He smiled and stood up, pressing the power button on the television remote control and picking up the afghan from the back of the couch, one his grandmother had knitted in ages past.

He gently and quietly unfolded it and draped it across Samantha's sleeping form before he turned out the light. He took a few steps toward his bedroom and then turned around and went back down to his spot on the couch. He neither wanted Sam to wake up in the middle of the night panicking in a strange place, nor did he want to be alone himself.

Instead he put his feet up on the table and quickly fell asleep.


	13. Chapter 13

_My son is dying._

Floyd Wilks sat on one side of his son's bed, the girl that he had hoped would one day be his son's wife sat on the other. Each of them held one of Derek Wilks' hands. Through the window, the sun was beginning to sink low. A few hundred miles south a boy and girl named Andy and Samantha were sitting together and watching the sun set in the mountains above Lake Pratt, here an older man and a much younger woman watched the same sunset while they helplessly waited for someone they loved to die.

_My son is dying and there is nothing I can do about it. _

A few hours ago there was a terrifying exchange of gunfire and explosions coming from across town, in the direction of the college. That eventually faded away, and with the exception of a few sporadic gunshots and a car crash somewhere down the street, silence had fallen down around them. Even Floyd and Amanda had long since stopped trying to fill the noiseless void with talk. The two of them sat lost in their own thoughts; the labored breathing of Derek was the only sound keeping them company.

Every few minutes Amanda would put a new washcloth on Derek's head, pulled out of a plastic bucket full of ice water at her side. It would become warm almost immediately, the boy's fever had passed 105 degrees, he was slowly burning himself out. His neck was black and swollen and each breath he took sounded like he was drowning in his own phlegm.

Floyd had called up the doctor's office, trying to get someone to take a look at Derek, but the only person that answered was a secretary who warned him not to go to the emergency room. It seemed that someone had snapped and started firing a gun at the hospital, killing the only two doctors that were still healthy enough to treat patients.

Helplessly, he waited there beside his son's bed for the end to come. Occasional sneezes and coughs came from Amanda. At first it looked like she had fought the flu off before it could take a foothold, but it was becoming evident that she was slowly coming down with it after all. Floyd hoped that she would survive it, she had fought it off so hard up to this point and maybe that was a good sign.

With nothing else to do but hope and wait; Floyd sat back in his chair, watching and remembering the past. Remembering his time with the son that was soon to be gone.

"_Give it a little bit more throttle, you are doing fine."_

_A fifteen-year-old Derek nodded at his father's instruction and pushed the throttle in a little bit more, the throaty rumble of the Cessna's engine immediately increasing in intensity. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, lining up the runway that was quickly filling the windshield of the small plane. _

"_Don't forget to give it the last ten." Floyd said patiently._

_Derek nodded again, stiffly. He reached over and pushed the flaps lever all the way down, the nose of the plane rising slightly as the lowered flaps simultaneously slowed the plane and increased its lift. He pushed the nose forward again, slowly bringing the plane down the last three hundred feet or so until he was just behind the runway._

"_I'm not ready for this yet, you need to set it down for me." Derek said, he sounded a little bit panicked. _

"_You are just fine, son. You know how to do this." Floyd said calmly, not so much as reaching for the yoke. _

_Derek nodded, pushing the rudder pedal a little too hard and causing the plane to seesaw back and forth violently for a moment. He caught it quickly, however, and soon the plane was level again, floating on a cushion of air just above the runway. Floyd smiled at this, not saying anything, just letting his son do what he knew that he could do._

_And he did._

_Derek slowly let the plane lower down onto the runway, the rear wheels thumping as they touched the blacktop. The plane bounced into the air and remained airborne for a moment more before it dropped one more onto first the rear wheels and then the front; for good this time. _

_Floyd pulled out the throttle and looked over at his son, grinning. Derek's face was a mask of delight and self-pride. He had just done what he was sure he was nowhere near ready to do on his own; land a plane. _

"_How do you feel?" Floyd asked._

"_Awesome!" His son replied, giddy._

"_Good!" Floyd said, reaching back over and pushing the throttle back in. "Do it again!"_

Floyd smiled, looking out at the back yard through the window. The dark emerald grass getting long, it needed to be mowed horribly. The heat was really starting to pick up out there. He figured they had one or two weeks left before it became absolutely sweltering.

He looked at a spot in the middle of the yard and could have sworn, if only for a second, that he saw a softball land in the middle of the grass.

"_Catch dad!"_

_Floyd turned around and ducked just as the softball sailed over his head. His first reaction was to get angry with the young kid for almost hitting him with the ball. But after turning to look at his giggling son leaning against his baseball bat, casually as though it was a cane, the would-be anger all just melted away._

_It was the boy's eighth birthday and his most treasured gift was the thing that he had been bugging his dad for in the weeks leading up to now; a catcher's mitt. It was only a phase, in a few years the boy would have fallen completely in love with his father's passion; aviation. For now though, the Cleveland Indians were a mainstay on the screen of their television._

_Floyd was about to toss the ball back when he heard a shrill little voice yell "Derek!"_

_He turned, eyebrows upraised to see the little blond sprite of a girl from next door running over, her pigtails bouncing around on her head and shoulders as she held up a package in her hand, covered in brightly colored paper and bedecked in bows. _

_Floyd just stood back, watching Amanda and his son. He didn't see whatever embarrassingly girly gift the neighbor girl had gotten for his son, but he only had to see his son's look of disgust to know it must be a good one. Derek was neck deep in the "all girls have cooties" age, but it was only a matter of time before he realized that he didn't mind girls so much._

"_It's almost over dad." Floyd hear his son say, making him look up from the grass._

"_What's that?" he asked._

"I said it's almost over." Amanda said, her face drained of color and a thin line of tears running down each cheek. She looked at him hopefully, as if she thought that the great Floyd Wilks might have one last bit of magic that could prevent his son from crossing into the hereafter.

Floyd didn't meet Amanda's stare, he instead looked down at the bed his son was lying in. It was a heavy oaken antique that Derek had slept in ever since he was out of a crib.

"_Dad?" _

_Floyd stopped at the doorway, his hand on the light switch right after he had put his five-year-old son to bed for the night. The look on Derek's face was that of someone who just had a troubling thought. _

"_Hmm?" Floyd said._

"_Will I ever get to see mom one day?" Derek asked._

_Floyd blinked, not at all prepared for that question. He had never subscribed to Christian views, or any other religion for that matter. He supposed that he was a Christian just based on the fact that he was born into a Baptist family, but he had never gone to church or anything after he had gotten out of his parents' house. _

"_Yes." He said simply._

_Derek furrowed his little eyebrows at this. "Well, how do I get to see her if she's dead?"_

"_Well…" Floyd started, not sure he could express his thoughts in a way that a child could understand. "Nobody is ever really dead as long as someone still remembers them. If someone you love dies, they will keep on living in the hearts of the people that loved them. So mom is always with us in our hearts."_

_The boy looked at his father with awe. "So as long as someone remembers me, I'm going to live forever?"_

_Floyd suppressed a smile, delighted at his son's childishly logical interpretation. _

"_That's the way of it, boy." Floyd said, walking back over to the bed and leaning down to give his son a last hug before he went to sleep._

Floyd squeezed his son's hand gently, reaching across the bed and taking Amanda's free hand into his own. They didn't speak any more, but just sat and waited. Derek's death wasn't long in coming and was peaceful.

He took in one deep breath and opened his eyes they first came to rest on Amanda and regarded her for what seemed an eternity. The then traveled sluggishly and with great effort over to Floyd.

Floyd cracked a pained and bitter smile at his son, and felt it received as Derek squeezed his hand almost imperceptibly. He could feel the warm rush of tears running down his face and neck.

Derek's eyes slowly lost focus and clarity, his head rolling to the side. That last breath wheezed back out in small measured increments and then was gone completely.

Floyd could hear Amanda crying and gave both his son and his daughter-in-law's hands a squeeze before he stood up. Walking like a frail old man, Derek circled the bed and put his hands on Amanda's shoulders for a moment before he walked to the window and looked out.

The sun was setting and in another few minutes it would be gone. But that's not what Floyd saw, he saw him and his son playing catch in the yard, beneath the bedroom window, in the afternoon sunshine.

"_Remember me"_Floyd thought, _"and I'll live forever."_


	14. Chapter 14 June 26th

**I**

The noise was horrendous.

The sound of a single gunshot echoing in a confined space is nearly deafening. The sound of what must be dozens of automatic weapons firing in an enclosed space like the Lincoln Tunnel, the underwater connector that crossed the Hudson river from Manhattan Island to New Jersey, is enough to drive someone to close madness.

Lance Corporal Claudia Donaldson would have vouched for that fact firsthand.

Crouching down behind a Dodge pick-up, the young woman was praying that this would be over soon. An hour or so before, a semi-organized assault on the barricade blocking travel off of Manhattan Island was sprung upon the soldiers stationed there. She couldn't really blame them, the superflu was raging throughout the Big Apple and its residents (at least the ones that weren't too sick) were pretty desperate at this point to get out.

It was futile; Claudia knew it, the people down yonder tunnel being cut in half by automatic weapons fire probably knew it too. While the plague was raging out of control in New York, it was only marginally better on the outside, and getting worse daily. They were all scared, she knew. When some people get scared they turn to God, when some people get scared they turn to their loved ones.

And when some people get scared, they turn to violence.

If they had been able to drive through the tunnel, maybe they had a chance. However, the tunnel was completely jammed with cars, a motorcycle might have been able to maneuver well enough to traverse the tunnel on the maintenance catwalk running down one side, but the clot of cars and trucks packed in on the roadway itself pretty much meant that anyone who wanted to escape the tunnel was doing so on foot.

Breathing in and out several times to calm herself down, she returned to crawling through forward, hugging the left side of the tunnel away from the catwalk where most of the fighting was taking place. Her rifle clutched in her hands as she crawled, she tried to shut out everything and concentrate on what was in front of her. If nothing else, she was thankful that the lights in the tunnel were still on – it would be madness to navigate the tunnel in the dark.

**II**

That Claudia would one day be a marine, no one doubted. Not her family or friends, and certainly not her father; Captain David Donaldson. The military tradition was so deeply ingrained into the family that Claudia was saying "Semper Fi" only shortly after she was saying "Mom" and "Dad".

She spent her entire time in high school participating in junior ROTC, and it was a surprise to nobody that she enlisted in the Marine Corp a few months before graduation. Claudia Donaldson was very eager to please. So eager that she did what she least wanted to do in the world, join the marines, just because it's what her dad wanted from her.

She was miserable at first but gradually acclimated to military life. In fact, life under a drill sergeant wasn't all that much different than life under the esteemed Captain Donaldson. But all through her tour she had a very clear tally in her head of how many days and years remained was until her four year commitment was over.

Up until a week or so ago, she had been looking forward to the end of July when she would be going home for good, her sentence finished. She didn't have to worry about her father scornfully criticizing her decision to leave the service; he had died of a stroke the year before. Nor did she worry about having a clear goal of what she was going to do after she got out; just being out was good enough to start with. Anything was better than "yes sergeant", "no sergeant", "yes sergeant", "may I take a fucking piss sergeant?"

In fact, she was riding on a cloud right up until it was yanked out from under her. The yank came on the day she was pulled out of her home in Virginia and stationed here right about the time that the Superflu left the newspaper's health section and landed on the front page.

A gnawing, cramping feeling developed in her stomach when she realized she was being given live ammunition for dealing with "riot suppression" on American citizens. Once it was obvious that the flu had gotten out of control within the cramped confines of Manhattan, the powers that be decided that the best thing to do would be to seal it off and thus contain the sickness.

It was, of course, ludicrous. Captain Trips had already sprung up in so many places that containment had long since become a pipe dream. Even Claudia knew that from her position, surely her superiors also saw it. Hell, by two days into the assignment half of her unit was showing some symptoms of the flu.

By the morning of the 25th, the morning she had decided to go AWOL, half of her unit was dead or incapacitated. Her friend Rick, whom she had been stationed with from the very beginning of her tour was lying dead in a ditch behind the camp. The flu didn't kill him, he was shot by their commanding officer for questioning orders when they were told to shoot anyone who attempted to flee through the tunnel.

It seemed to her that she was the only person around her that wasn't serious ill with the flu, and she didn't even feel sick. The crazier things got, the more she wanted to run for it and get away from everything that had anything to do with the military. She didn't though, she had seen four deserters lined up and shot in the back of the head yesterday and she had no interest in going out the way that they did.

She decided instead just to bide her time. Sooner or later everyone would be so sick that she could stroll out of the camp and nobody would have anything to say about it. That was her thoughts at least until Lieutenant McCollum took command yesterday. The new lieutenant was a sadist in every way imaginable. He was the type of person that would have lived his entire life in obscurity unless the opportunity came up to become a tyrant; and become a tyrant he did.

Franklin McCollum made it a habit of ordering the execution of anyone in the unit who was too sick to continue service. His reasons for this were simple; they were probably going to die anyway and the care for the sick drained resources that could have been going to fulfilling their primary mission – guarding the tunnel.

Claudia didn't know what she found more chilling; the murder or the fact that the lieutenant thought that the executions were in the best interests of the sick men. But that wasn't the worst of it either. He had begun summary executions of anyone who questioned orders; and questioning orders was as simple as not rushing fast enough after he barked out a command. Either way, Claudia had decided that it was time for her to get the hell out of her service to Uncle Sam before Uncle Sam's buddy Franklin McCollum decided that she had a bit of a sniffle and it was time to shuffle her off of her mortal coil.

She kept her mouth shut and tried her best to not bring any notice to herself during the morning's briefing. The lieutenant explained to them that a buildup of people, most of them sick, on the other end of the tunnel could spell some bad news. Claudia found herself fascinated by his grin, in a grotesque way it reminded her of Jack Nicholson in Batman. He never stopped grinning, not even when he was pulling a gun to shoot someone in the back of the head after the briefing for the treasonous crime of coughing while he was talking.

The decision had been made to sever the electrical connection into the tunnel, the powers that be figured that the simplest plan would be the best one. They thought that if there was no light in the tunnel, that would be the end of the security concern, at least on this side. The George Washington Bridge was something else entirely, but at least it was out in the fresh air instead of this foul-smelling subterranean tomb.

There was no escape on this side of the tunnel, only the promise of a bullet if she was caught trying to get away from the Mad Lieutenant. But through the tunnel was a different story altogether. The sick people on the other side thought that freedom was on the New Jersey side of the tunnel. Claudia knew better; she knew that freedom was in Manhattan, freedom from the U.S. military at the very least.

**III**

Claudia desperately wanted to cover her ears from the cacophonous gunfire echoing off the ceramic tiles of the tunnel all around her. More than once she was showered in a spray of ceramic tile chips raining down from a stray gunshot that struck the wall too close to where she was crawling. Inches at a time she made her way around cars and under them when she found a nice SUV or pick-up she could work her way underneath and maybe take a short breather.

Twice she passed within a few feet of a couple rioters who were hunkered down behind vehicles exchanging fire with the marines. She could see that a few of their compatriots were lying dead or dying from gunshot wounds taken during the firefight. During these instances her training tried to kick in; to persuade her to train her rifle on these rioters, these enemies of the state.

She didn't though, they were of no consequence to her anymore. Her only mission was her own; to make it the mile and a half through the tunnel, on her stomach if she needed to.

Underneath an old jeep she decided that it was time to make herself appear as inconspicuous as she could. She stripped off her fatigues, a pair of jean shorts and a t-shirt were beneath them. She didn't have any other shoes even if she could have found a way to smuggle them along with her. It didn't matter much, she could find something more comfortable than jungle boots when she got into the city. The last thing that she did was to pull her dog tags off and drop them on the discarded pile of clothing.

"_Semper Fi"_ she thought wryly.

That chore finished, she rolled out from under the jeep and started crawling again. At one point she thankfully had a truck she could take cover under as automatic weapons fire tore into a group of young men carrying shotguns and hunting rifles that wandered close to her position. Claudia flinched as a rifle came clattering to the ground right before its owner; the upper half of the man's head was mostly gone. Claudia scrambled away in shock and surprise as the remains of the man's brains spilled out; a lumpy gray mixture the consistency of scrambled eggs and mixed with its owner's blood.

She moved more quickly now, not crawling but crouched down and running in between cars. More than once a bullet struck a car or shattered a window nearby making her almost certain that the weapon of a former comrade had intended the shot for her. And twice the entire tunnel tremored as an explosion's shockwave bounced off of the walls, echoing into the confined space; grenades probably.

Gradually, the sound of the gunfire drifted away further and further behind her. The first time she ran across someone who was armed she stopped, ready to defend herself. However, lacking the marine uniform, she wasn't seen as a threat by anyone else in the tunnel. And besides, most of the people left in the tunnel weren't interested in fighting their way out. These people were either resigned to finish their lives right where they were or to get back onto the island and meet their fates there.

Some people sat in their cars, waiting to die. Others had long since made that crossing and were left to rot in the tunnel for eternity. Most of them though had long since taken what belongings they had with them and hiked back to the other side of the tunnel and the (relative) safety of Manhattan.

Only when she was within sight of the other end of the tunnel did she realize that her decision to leave didn't come a moment too soon. The fluorescent tubes that lit the tunnel flickered and then died as the lieutenant's plan came to its fruition, the lights in the tunnel were now out for good. Claudia walked a little bit more quickly, eager to get out and back into the sunlight.

**IV**

Some comic wit had once stated that he would never leave New York City because he didn't trust air that he couldn't chew. But no air smelled sweeter than that around Manhattan Island on the 25th of June, at least that was the opinion of one Claudia Donaldson as she emerged from the dark recesses of the Lincoln Tunnel into a clear summer day.

The stalled and silent traffic was no better outside the tunnel as it was inside. Cars were lined up as far as she could see, thousands of them. Some of them were mostly empty and some of the packed to the gills with its inhabitants' worldly possessions. But all of them seemed to have the single-minded obsession with getting off of this island.

"_Where did they think they were going to run to?"_ Claudia thought. _"Where could they go that was far enough away for them to escape the flu?"_

Her loaded rifle lay casually across her shoulder as Claudia started to make her way out of the crush of cars and into the city. She was given a wide berth by the few people still out and walking around. Once she glanced into a car and immediately swore to herself that she wouldn't do so again. The Cadillac she looked into contained a man and woman sprawled out across the front seats, one of them unconscious but still breathing in loud raspy breaths. In the back their three children sat still fastened in with their seatbelts. All three of them were dead, their necks swollen up like bloated sausages.

The blond girl in the middle was the one that caught her eye. Her eyes were fixed and staring straight ahead, flies buzzing around her face and crawling in and out of her mouth and nose. In both arms she clutched a worn and well-loved teddy bear. She held it across her chest more like she was attempting to protect it rather than using it as a talisman to protect her.

Claudia couldn't take her eyes off the tiny hands clutching the bear. Somehow that was what she found far more disturbing than the swollen neck or the crawling flies. Suddenly, the smell leaking out through the car windows hit her and made the gorge rise in her throat. It was the combination of vomit, fecal matter and death, it hit her in the face like she had just been slapped. She turned and stumbled away from the car and kneeled to the concrete, vomiting.

Rolling onto her side, she gasped for air, almost hyperventilating. She made a mental deal with herself that she was not going to be looking inside any more cars today. In fact, she thought as she laid beside the pool of her own vomit, it would be just as well if she didn't look inside any cars for many moons to come.

A few moments of steady breathing later, and her stomach making a totally non-binding agreement that it was going to cooperate, Claudia pulled herself back up to her feet. They were wobbly and leaden, but she was confident that as long as she kept her eyes focused on what she was doing, they would be okay.

She hadn't walked more than a block before she happened to glance up at a mural that had been painted on the wall of a parking structure. Its artist was presumably the dreadlocked young black man who lay on the ground dead amidst dozens of paint cans.

While not making her sick, the mural disturbed her in a way that the dead girl could never have. It was a skyline of New York City with a blood red sky behind it. Through the sky was galloping four horsemen with skulls for faces and wielding bloody scythes. A mountain of the dead was piled all along the bottom of the mural, thousands upon thousands of individually drawn skeletons made up a veritable river of death.

The top was what spooked her more than anything – in red spidery letters, dripping as though they were bleeding read: _Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL._

_Strange fucking days are afoot in the good 'ol US of A. _Claudia thought to herself._And I have a feeling that they are going to get a lot stranger before they get any better._


	15. Chapter 15

**I**

It had been not what Andy would have called a normal day by any means. But in the grand scheme of things, "normal" was being graded on a very strict curve that was getting steeper and steeper by the day. It is amazing how when everything has gone to hell in a handbasket, you find yourself being able to accept things that a week before you would have called ridiculous.

Dimly, Andy could feel someone shaking him and calling his name.

Sleep did not release him easily. He lay there cocooned in unconsciousness and rising from that state felt as though he was trying to swim to the surface of a pit of warm and thick mud. He tried once to open his eyes but it just seemed like too much work to do. He had just started to doze back off, back into sleep's welcoming arms when he was shaken again.

"Andy!" the girl's voice said. "Com'on. Please wake up!"

He opened his eyes to nothing at all, just pitch-blackness. The only thing that he could make out was a dark shape hunched over him, shaking his shoulder violently. He looked around blearily, he was on the couch in his living room but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what he was doing there. He looked over to the digital clock that was on the VCR, but apparently it wasn't working – the display was dark.

Gradually he became aware of where he was and how he had gotten there. The reality of the day before, both the pleasant and the unpleasant parts slowly started to seep their way back inside his brain. He realized that the person shaking him must be…

"Sam?" he said tiredly. "What's the matter? Are you okay?"

The girl flung her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He could feel the tears that were running down her face rub off onto his cheek, he could feel the warmth of her body against his. The feeling of both of these things caused an unusual butterfly sensation inside his gut. Gingerly, her pulled himself into a sitting position, wrapping his arms hesitantly around Samantha.

"Sam, what's wrong?" he questioned her again.

"I had a dream, it was horrible." She started, crying hard enough that her words were almost unintelligible "And then I woke up and tried to turn the lights on and nothing is working."

Andy took all of this in, still in a state of shock. Part of his mind was still wildly trying to register where he was and what the hell was going on. He was dazed and groggy. Plus he found that he had his arms full of girl, a sensation that while he didn't find it be unpleasant in the slightest, it wasn't helping his inability to focus one bit. He looked over to the clock again, then turned his head back toward the microwave in the kitchen to see the same results.

"The power is out, that's all." He said reassuringly.

Samantha didn't give any indication that she had heard. Her face was pressed into Andy's shoulder, which was already damp from her tears. Andy looked bewildered almost to the point of panic. This was entirely new territory for him, he had never so much as had a girlfriend and now he suddenly was hugging someone that he would have sworn two days ago hated him.

He tried to think of what kind of state she would be in if they hadn't run into each other last night. He tried to think about her at home with the bodies of her dead family to keep her company, the power gone and the lights gone away with them. He tried to think of the hysterics she was in right now multiplied by a factor of five.

In his head, he had a frighteningly real image of Samantha swallowing a handful of pills and then lying on the floor beside her parents, patiently waiting to join them. He shivered at the idea and had to shake his head slightly to clear the nightmare vision out. The thought disturbed him in a way that her frantic hysteria didn't.

"Want to talk about it?" He asked her gently.

She said nothing at first, but slowly she started to relax her vise-like hug. Her huge anguished sobs slowly gave way to deep breaths and a trickle of tears. The darkness certainly didn't help, but just the closeness to another human being was enough for her to banish the nightmare and_maybe _to believe that it wasn't real.

"I'm just being stupid" she managed to choke out. "It was only a nightmare, it just seemed so real."

"It's okay, tell me about it." Andy said, letting Sam go and lounging back on the couch.

Sam sighed and lay back on the couch, her feet lying across Andy's legs. "It's really hard to explain, I guess. I was running through a cornfield and this man was chasing me, I couldn't see him but he was… I don't know… he was dark. A dark man."

From the mention of "cornfields" Andy stiffened and stared at Sam wide-eyed. He was glad for the dark at this moment, because he didn't want her to see how he reacted to her story. She was having a dream that was way too similar to the one he had a few nights back, and then again last night. He could hear her continue talking but in his head the only thing he could think about was the terrible eyes at the bottom of the Lake Pratt in his dreams.

"Was there any more to it?" Andy asked hopefully, striking a match and lighting a candle on the coffee table.

Samantha looked at him, confused for a moment. "What do you mean?"

Andy felt stupid even talking about this, it was idiotic of him to think that the fact that their dreams being similar was anything more than a coincidence. In fact, he was sure she was going to get a huge laugh out of him even considering it. _Screw it, _he thought, _the laughter would do her some good right now._

"I mean, did you happen to hear any music _(a guitar)_, and someone _(an old black woman)_ singing in your dream? He asked.

All the foolishness that he felt at even broaching the subject was gone the moment he met Sam's stare. In her eyes he saw validation for everything that he had suspected, she had indeed had the same dreams that he was having. It wasn't relief he felt though, it was a sensation of dread and foreboding. He was quite sure that he would have rather she laughed at him and tell him he was just being silly.

"The woman's name is…" Andy started.

"Mother Abigail, and she live in…" Sam continued, wide-eyed in disbelief.

"Hemingford Home, Nebraska." Andy finished.

The two teens sat staring at each other, they had the bewildered and spooked look of two kids who had been playing with an Ouija board and it told them something that they were neither expecting nor ready for. The feeling in the room was electrical; it seemed for a moment as though the enormity of what they had just shared with tangible. They weren't hallucinating, they were actually being called to a place that was half a continent away from them.

But just as they started to breathe normally again, a crash came from the kitchen. Samantha shrieked girlishly at the shock but ran quickly after Andy as he crossed the room to the kitchen to see what was going on, picking up the lit candle on the way.

Andy stopped dead in his tracks when he got to the kitchen, Samantha was so intent on following right behind him that she ran into him. He failed to notice her or anything else for that matter; he stared directly ahead at the enormous black raven that was sitting on the windowsill of the open kitchen window (The window he was sure that he didn't leave open, he thought).

It seemed to stare back and forth between the two of them for a moment and then emitted a loud and shrill "CAW!" that made Andy want to cover his ears. He could feel one of Sam's hands on his shoulder; she was watching the great black bird with a mixture of wonder and fear bordering on terror.

Several more times the bird crowed, as though it were admonishing them for some imagined offense. It would extend its wings out and arch it's neck back, cawing angrily. Finally Andy had had enough and pulled an oven mitt off of a hook beside the refrigerator and threw it at the crow.

"Go on!" he yelled. "Get the hell out of here."

The bird stayed there for a moment more, as if it were mocking Andy's command to leave. But finally it turned and with a few flaps of its wings it became airborne and left through the window, disappearing off into the night sky. Samantha watched silently for a moment and then frantically rushed forward and slammed the window closed with both hands and then pushed the lock shut.

Silently, the two walked back out into the living room and sat down, huddling together as they tried to process what had just happened to them. The lone candle in the room suddenly seemed weak and very insufficient. Andy never really got into wearing a watch and he wondered exactly what time it was, and how long until the dawn.

"What about the other dreams, the bad ones?" Sam asked tonelessly.

Andy looked at her for a moment as she stared expressionlessly into the candle.

"The only thing I ever remember is that I'm being chased by someone I can't really see, even when I'm looking at him." Andy said, not sure he really wanted to talk about this. "It's not that he's invisible or anything. it's just that wherever he is, it's hard to look there for very long. It's like a walking shadow that I'm trying to see. I mean... I know that doesn't make any sense…"

"Yes it does." Sam said quickly. "That's almost exactly what I remember from my dreams. And sometimes I see red eyes. Sometimes there's someone holding onto me and I can't get them to let go."

Samantha leaned back and crossed her arms across her midsection defensively; she was shivering despite the fact that it wasn't really all that cold. Why did they have to talk about something this scary at night, she was thinking. Wouldn't the daytime be better suited to this kind of conversation?

"Do you want to go back to sleep?" Andy offered. "I think it's still a few hours before the sun comes up."

Sam shook her head "I don't think I could go back to sleep if I tried. What about you?"

"Probably not. Not after that anyway." Andy admitted.

Samantha stretched herself back out on the couch, pressing up against the backrest and patting her hand on the space next to her. "Come lay down with me then?" She asked.

Wordlessly, Andy lay down beside Samantha, facing her. First she put her arm around him and then he countered the gesture. Crazily, the thought occurred to him that if this were a movie, they would kiss next. Life wasn't a movie though and after a moment of looking at each other, Sam closed her eyes and despite her certainty that it wasn't possible, both of them were sound asleep within a few minutes.

**II**

Though they didn't talk about it for the rest of the day, it was obvious that the surreal awakening they had during the night was weighing heavily upon them. Sunlight helped though; and by the time they had a breakfast of granola bars and cans of Pepsi, the whole thing was quickly starting to seem just like yet another in a long string of nightmares.

The grisly task of the day was ahead of them, and regardless of how hard it was to dig four graves and bury the bodies; Andy had offered to do it all himself. He knew how close Samantha was to her family and wanted to spare her the torment of having to put them all to rest.

She wouldn't have it though. Andy surmised that she felt this was something that she was solely responsible for, and Andy could at least understand that. Samantha would have felt like she was running away if she didn't do what needed to be done, and she wasn't going to hide behind her friend to do it.

She went so far as to resist any suggestion that Andy had to make the process easier on her. They had decided to bury her family in the flower garden behind the house and while Andy was digging the graves, Samantha was inside preparing her loved ones for burial. He often looked up at the second floor window, feeling this almost electrical need to charge inside the house and make sure that she was all right.

He didn't. He was no psychologist, but he figured that this must be what Sam needed to heal. In her own way, he figured, this was how she was saying goodbye. He wasn't sure where they stood with each other; she was heartsick and needed someone to lean on. He didn't mind that; it made him feel good to protect her, it made him feel useful.

Mentally, Andy tried to do the math in his head. There were about eighty people living in Pratt Lake. If only the two of them survived, that meant that 97.5 of the town died from the flu and if that number could be applied to everywhere else, it meant that there were probably still around seven million Americans alive out there. His math could be, and probably was flawed; eighty people are nowhere near enough to make an accurate statistical analysis from. He contented himself with what his science teacher would have called a SWAG, or "scientific wild-assed guess". That guess was that there were somewhere between three-and-a-half and fourteen million people left alive in the country.

He figured that he would at some point soon have to talk to Samantha and the two of them would need to decide what action they would take. There was not much food here and no way to get more once what little they had was gone. That meant that at the absolute least they were going to have to go to Kingston, and soon.

But what after that? What would they really do then?

_Nebraska_ was the first thing that popped into his mind but he quickly pushed it back down. It would be ridiculous to go halfway across the country because of a dumbassed dream. It had seemed logical in the late watches of the night, but in the rational sunlight it seemed nothing more than a foolish fancy. Sam would probably laugh at him for even suggesting such a plan of attack; they needed instead to figure out how they were going to rebuild some semblance of normal life right here.

Andy was a realist, there's no doubt about that. He knew that once they hooked up with other people, Samantha would find someone she liked more than him and that would be the last of their friendship; or at least the end of how it was at this moment. But for right now it was nice to have her with him, he would just enjoy it while it lasted and decide what to do next when the time came.

"Andy" a voice said from behind him.

He turned and Sam was there, her freckled face was wet with tears. She looked totally drained, both physically and emotionally. He stood there uncertain for a moment, uncertain what he should or shouldn't do and uncertain about what she would want him to do. But finally he said to hell with protecting his fragile ego and did what he _thought _she would want him to do.

Andy stepped forward and drew Sam into his arms, hugging her tightly to himself. The floodgates opened once more, Sam's body was wracked with huge tortured sobs. He thought lamely that he should say something to comfort her, but what the hell do you say to make someone feel better who had just lost all of their family. Instead he decided that silence was probably the best thing he could give to her.

He rested his chin on her shoulder and rubbed her back gently, looking out over the horizon and the mountains that loomed over them. For the first time he realized that the weather was turning sour. Dark storm clouds were building along the ridge and would eventually spill over into the valley and let go of their contents, probably right onto his and Sam's heads. It would probably be best to get the burials done before that happened.

"You have already done the hard part. I will do the rest for you if it would make you feel better." Andy offered.

Sam squeezed him tightly for a moment and then shook her head. "Thanks…but we are nearly there, just help me finish up."

"Okay." Andy said simply, and the two of them went upstairs.

Samantha had found several of the quilts that her grandmother had lovingly made and wrapped each one around the body of one of her loved ones. When she was done she had sewed each of them shut. Now the only thing to do was to take them downstairs and put them into the ground.

One at a time they carried each body down the stairs and outside. Andy tried not to look at the family pictures on the walls. He tried not to think about how each of the bundles he was helping to carry down the steps and put cover up with dirt was one of the happy and smiling people from those pictures.

_Lord, _Andy thought; _If you are up there, please let me not have to do any more of this ever again. Okay?_


	16. Chapter 16

"Lady"

It's not _"Lady",_ Claudia thought, _"It's Lance Corporal."_

"_Where the hell am I?"_ Came immediately after. It was dark and she had a decidedly uncomfortable stabbing pain at multiple locations on her back. She couldn't for the life of her recall where she was; Virginia, New York…hell, even back home in good ol' Louisiana seemed plausible right now. Certainly she…

"Lady!"

_Lady is a dog; it was from one of those Disney movies._ What the hell was the name of it? Claudia though groggily._ "The two dogs were eating spaghetti and were chewing on the same noodle and…"_

"Lady, wake up!"

Claudia opened her eyes and slammed them shut at the bright light that decided to intrude rather rudely at the opportunity. Her head throbbing like someone was using it like a bass drum, she slowly opened her eyes again to narrow slivers, peering out at the ruin of a bus stop she had crash-landed to after her trip through the Lincoln Tunnel. It wasn't nighttime, just twilight; that meant that she had slept almost half the day away laying on this metal bench, no wonder her back hurt so badly. At first she was horrified at herself for falling asleep in this place with God only knows how many wierdos around, but then she realized that they would most likely just assume she was dead along with who knows how many other New Yorkers.

Simultaneously she caught motion out of the corner of her eyes and realized that the voice she was hearing wasn't a dream. She turned her head and emitted a rather girlish scream (which she immediately detested) when she saw the man squatting down on the sidewalk beside her.

She jerked back and almost rolled off of the bench at the sight of the unseemly little man. He was grinning madly at her, wrapped up in horrible shreds of clothing that appeared to have, at one time, been a United States Army uniform. There was nothing uniform about it now; it was dingy and stained, the patch on the arm that denoted him as a paratrooper was now hanging on by only a half dozen threads. The man did not appear to notice. The only thing clean and polished on the entire getup was the Purple Heart pinned to his breast.

"Easy there lady," He said, each word coming out clear and measured as though he though he was talking to someone who wouldn't understand him. "I ain't gonna hurt ya, I just checking if youse is dead. It ain't safe for you to be sleepin' out here like this, you think this is Queens?"

The man started laughing at the joke that he had apparently just made and Claudia, unsure of what else to do, laughed with him weakly. He had a crazy look about him, but unlike anyone else that Claudia had seen in the last two days, he didn't look sick.

His laughter cut off as quickly as it had begun; the man leaned in and whispered to her conspiratorially, "The buses don't stop to pick you up if you are asleep."

Claudia nodded slowly and then reversed and shook her head. "No…I wasn't waiting for a bus."

"They what are ya doin' sleepin at a bus stop?!" The man yelled and then launched into another burst of cackling laughter. The grime on his skin split and cracked around his mouth and eyes as he smiled.

The question actually caught her a little bit off-guard. She _didn't _know what she was doing there…at least not exactly. She had put so much thought into getting through the tunnel and away from her dubious friends that she hadn't put any thought at all to what she was going to do now that she was here.

The George Washington Bridge was a possibility; maybe she could cross back there and start traveling...where? Maybe south to Louisiana she supposed. Claudia had a lot of family and friends down there, her parents among them, and she figured there was some possibility that they were okay…maybe Captain Trips didn't even strike down there, maybe life was still normal somewhere else in the country.

"I'm not really familiar with this place…Could you tell me what's the fasted way to get to the George Washington Bridge from here?" Claudia asked the man.

"Well, the fastest way would be ya to take a cab." The man said, motioned toward the streets filled with stilled vehicles as though it was just another busy rush hour. "But if ya ain't got the money like me, then it's a long walk. I could show you if ya want."

Claudia shook her head. "No thank you, I don't want to bother anyone else with my problems. Just point me in the right direction and I'm sure I can figure out how to get there."

The crazy man looked at her like she was out of her mind, go figure. "Not gonna happen lady, you need Protection. This city ain't no place for a dame like you, ya need Protection." The look of awe and concern for her well being reminded her suspiciously of the professional shyster that sold her a used car.

He sucked in his ample gut and poked himself meaningfully on the chest a couple of times. "I'm Walter Harris; I can protect you, lady. Nobody around this city fucks with Walter Harris, I'll tell ya _that._ Nobody here wants to get what I gave those fuckin' gooks."

Walter pointed to the dingy Vietnam campaign ribbon on his ratty uniform. More and more Claudia was getting the distinct impression that she would be best off getting away from this guy as quickly as she possibly could. He was getting a strange glint in his eye that she normally associated with unstable people who were potentially violent.

"Okay, but I'm going to go into this place over here and use the phone. When I'm ready to go I will come get you." Claudia said, smiling sincerely as she pointed vaguely to one of the many small and dirty-looking businesses across the boulevard.

She turned and started walking; hoping that just maybe she had confused Walter enough that he wouldn't follow after her. An adult bookstore was the place she made a beeline for, pretending to be fishing though her pockets looking for a quarter as she crossed the street. She had thought her plan was a success for a moment before she heard the hollow beat of the lunatic's jungle boots on the asphalt behind her. Putting on a polite face, she quickly turned around, not wanting to have her back to him.

"I told you, bitch! This place is dangerous, youse ain't going nowhere without me." Walter said, advancing on her. The glint in his eye was becoming more and more disquieting.

Claudia tried to take a step back but found herself up against the front end of a Ford Explorer, its driver dead and slumped over the steering wheel. Walter grabbed her by the shoulders and leaned forward, she could smell the acrid tang of his body odor over the foulness of his breath. "What the fuck is the matter with you bitch? Aren't you listening to…"

Baring her teeth, Claudia brought her knee up, yelling angrily as she did so, and smashed it into Walter's crotch, cutting off whatever he had intended to say. His mouth opened up into an "O" of shock; he looked at her uncomprehending for a moment before his unlikely attacker slammed the heel of her hand into the bridge of his nose.

Claudia turned and started running up the street as Walter let out a squawk of shock and pain. He collapsed to his knees, the sickening crunch of his nose still reverberating though his head. His mouth still gaped idiotically as he watched the waterfall of blood stream down his face to dye red the filthy cloth of his old uniform. By the time he had the wherewithal to do anything, the seemingly non-threatening woman who had accosted him was already well on her way; running around cars where she could and climbing over their hoods where she couldn't.

"YOU COME BACK HERE! YOU COME BACK HERE!" She could hear him yelling. "BITCH, YOU COME BACK HERE!"

Claudia sprinted her way down the sidewalk which had an only slightly lower density of traffic on it than the street did. She ran past a woman escorting her kids down the street listlessly; there were quite a few people out and around now that she thought about it and all of them looked sick. It occurred to her that she was most-likely going to run into the same problem at the George Washington that the people in the tunnel found, she was quite liable to find the military keeping anyone from getting out that way too.

She slowed down to a quick jog, she could still hear the crazy bray of the esteemed Walter Harris coming from behind her, but it was getting more and more distant by the moment; he definitely wasn't following after her.

The streets were chaotic; she passed a squad card with an officer sitting in on the hood, his beacon lights flashing. "Hey baby, come over here." He croaked; the front of his uniform covered in wet snot and drool. Claudia didn't slow her pace as she walked by.

A little girl passed by her riding an old beat up bike with a banana seat. Her throat was swelled up and she looked like she was wearing the dark smudges of black that football players put under their eyes. Claudia slowed and turned to watch her as she rode past, swaying side to side as she pedaled slowly by.

She wondered where the little girl's parents were, though it was obvious that they were probably dead. There was little to be done about it though, so Claudia moved on. She was beginning to understand why the government decided to shut down the city; this place was scary without a plague burning it up from the inside out. But now, it was like hell on earth.

She had heard the rumors echoing thorough the armed forces despite assurances from every ranking officer that everything was on the up and up. She had heard the rumors about a military project that that had made a nifty little virus and then dropped it.

Whoops.

Thanks a bunch guys.

She would have written off anyone who told her a rumor like this a week ago as a moron, but when walking through a dead city with it's last inhabitants dropping like flies to a superpowered version of the flu; it suddenly seemed plausible. But much like the little girl who was dying even as she pedaled her bike away somewhere behind her, Claudia decided there was nothing she could do about it except to move on.

Having only a vague idea of where she was going she set out, thinking all the while that she could really use a gun.

_We are definitely not in Kansas anymore._ Claudia thought.


	17. Chapter 17

**I**

The key turned in the lock with a sharp and declamatory "click". Neil Dawes hadn't thought that his parents would have changed the locks after he disappeared, not really anyway. Yet somehow he didn't really expect the key to turn in the cylinder, almost as if this wasn't his house anymore. It was as though the moment that he stabbed William, his childhood officially came to a screeching halt and a much harsher adult life took its place.

He pushed the door open to a greeting of complete and utter silence. Part of him, a big part, was telling him to turn around and run away again and pretend that he had never come here. He didn't though; he walked in and closed the door silently behind him. He took in the last moment of silence before the yelling and screaming started, before the police came to take him away, probably with his father's blessing.

The moment was over all too soon, and seeing his reprieve at its end, he called out for them to come get him.

"Mom! Dad!" he yelled out, the sound echoing off the walls of the entryway.

Long seconds passed by and no response came out. No raging fury from his mother and his father, no sound of his sisters running up to their bedroom while casting baleful looks of distrust at him on their way up the stairs. There was no television playing, no music, and not even the sound of his mother or sisters playing the piano in the spacious living room. The house was as quiet as a long unused mausoleum.

"Anaya! Korin! Is anyone home?" Neil yelled out, his voice acquiring an uneasy, quavering quality.

Neil walked through the entryway and into the family room which was quite tidy, unlike the adjoining kitchen. The sink was filled with dishes, something that was absolutely unheard of in the Dawes household. Used and dried teabags littered the counters, leaving little rings of dried tea on the granite countertops. Bottles and packages of almost every over-the-counter cold and flu medication in existence were scattered haphazardly across the island that sat in the middle of the large food preparation area.

He ran from the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs, taking three or four of a time and stormed into his parents' bedroom. The bed was slept in and the phone was off the hook beside the bed. But curiously, nobody was here. A quick examination of his sisters' bedroom didn't give him any more information. His whole family had slept in the house and then left, and they were apparently sick just like so many that Neil had seen the last four days.

Could it be that after what happened, his family had to leave after being threatened by the other residents of Oak Valley or even by the police?

Neil discarded the possibility almost immediately. If that was the case, there wouldn't be all of the cold medication in the kitchen and he was damn well sure that even in a state of panic and terror there would not be a bed that went unmade in Nathaniel Dawes' house, no sir. He hoped desperately that his family was okay.

On a hunch he barreled back down the stairs and opened the laundry room door that led into the garage. He breathed a sigh of relief to find that one of the cars was gone. His family was alright, Neil was sure. They had just gone somewhere; probably to the doctor's office.

His fears relieved a little bit, he walked up to the kitchen and got himself a soda out of the refrigerator and slumped down onto the overstuffed leather couch. He picked up the remote control off of the table and turned on the television. He flipped from channel to channel, most of them were either test patterns or dead air, but Fox News was still up and running, and currently talking about cases of the Superflu popping up in Moscow and Beijing.

Congress was adjourned indefinitely, with over half its members out sick with the flu. So many school systems were closed down that it was quicker for them to name the ones that were still holding classes than it was for them to list the ones that weren't. The Washington D.C. subways were shut down until further notice and Dulles International Airport had closed down this morning because there were no longer enough air traffic controllers manning their stations for the FAA to guarantee the safety of air travelers.

After hearing something about martial law being declared, Neil lied down on the couch and closed his eyes. He could use a nap and he was sure that his family would be back home within a few hours anyway. The encounter wasn't going to be a fun one; he might as well rest up.

**II**

After stabbing his friend, Neil Dawes pedaled down the hill away from the old mansion as though the devil himself were in pursuit. He wished that he could have gone back to this morning and just not opened the door when William had come by; his mind was filled with hundreds of alternate scenarios that could have taken this morning's even in any direction but the one that it actually had.

Neil recalled his promises to his parents about not getting into any more trouble. He recalled his dad telling him that the last thing that he needs out of life is a worthless friend like Will Hayes. Only now, when it was already too late to go back and change things, did Neil truly see the wisdom behind his parents' words.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he wasn't going to just go home and wait for the police to come get him. He was going to have to take Cindy's advice and run away. It occurred to him that just maybe this could all be explained away; that Cindy would back him up in saying that Will got what he deserved. But at that moment all that Neil could see was his father's disapproving glare; and that was what he was really running away from.

He decided that for now he would just pedal his bike west as fast as he could, and find some place to hide out until he figured out what he would do next. Part of him, a big part, understood the hopelessness and futility of running. The rational side of his brain, however, could not override his need to flee; to escape.

Neil was so preoccupied with going as quickly as possible that he failed to notice the police car that had stealthfully pulled up beside him; or at least as stealthfully as one needs to be to pull up alongside a teenager whose mind is currently processing the fact that he has just murdered his best friend.

"Mister Dawes." The officer yelled out the lowered passenger window.

Neil turned, his eyes wide, to face the smiling visage of one officer Warren Graves. Neil opened his mouth and tried to say something, but no words would seem to escape from his throat. He tried to think of something, anything that would make himself appear normal.

"What are you up to today, son?" Graves asked him. "I don't see your friend around today, the two of your staying out of trouble?"

Words finally came to Neil.

"I haven't seen Will today, sir." He said shakily. "And I've been staying out of trouble, just went for a ride on my bike with Cindy Kellerman. I'm heading home now."

The officer nodded slowly, no doubt sniffing out his lies like a bloodhound sniffs a fleeing criminal's tracks, Neil thought.

After a moment that seemed like an eternity, Officer Graves nodded and smiled at Neil. "I'm glad to see that you are keeping out of trouble today, Mister Dawes. It seems you are pretty good at staying that way when your friend isn't around, you would be wise to get rid of him."

Neil flinched a little bit at that but smiled.

"Okay sir, thank you." He said, and then rode away.

**III**

Neil awoke suddenly, his shirt damp with sweat. A incoherent string of dreams and nightmares had plagued his fitful rest. He could almost smell cornfields rustling in a warm summer breeze and the sound of a guitar still lingered within his mind. He could still feel a terrible hand grabbing his arm, its owner terrible and dark, his face nothing but a shadow.

The sky had grown dark before Neil had woken up. That meant he had slept most of the day away, which wasn't surprising since he hadn't had more than a couple hours of sleep at a stretch since he had awoken the day of the stabbing. The last few days had been so strange and confusing that it took him a few moments to remember where he was, to remember that he was at home.

Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he realized, with a chill, that he was alone in the house. His parents and sisters had still not come home. He was sure that he was going to be awoken from his afternoon nap by his father yelling at him and then calling the police; and that was the best-case scenario.

But here he was, as alone as he had been last night; the only difference was that he was in his parent's house. He realized that he no longer really considered it to be his house. Best as Neil figured, his "house" was going to be the Chesapeake Juvenile Detention Center before the week was over and done with. The thought crept up on him again that perhaps his parents did decide to skip town for a while, out of shame at what their son had done. He reasoned it away, all of the evidence in the house suggested that everyone was sick.

The television channel he had been watching earlier had given way to blackness. Taking the remote control he started searching through channels, hoping to find something else on somewhere. He finally settled for an old comedy rerun about some radio station in Ohio. It wasn't what he wanted; he wanted something with live news, something that had a real person looking into the camera to tell him that everything was okay, that everything was going to be okay.

It bothered him that he needed the assurance of some complete stranger on the other end of the television to let him know that the world was going to keep going on, but it didn't make him feel any less alone and isolated. It didn't make him feel any less lonely. He didn't want to admit, even to himself, that right at that moment he would have given anything just to have his mother with him.

Finally a new idea occurred to him and he picked up the phone, intent on calling the hospital emergency room. It was possible that one of his sisters had the flu pretty badly and his parents had taken them to the emergency room to get checked out. It still made him uneasy that they still weren't home yet, but sometimes it takes a while to get looked at there; when his mom broke her wrist they were in that horrible place for almost seven hours.

Surely, with all the sick people out there, the emergency room must be packed. That was certainly a reasonable explanation were everyone was. Neil wasn't sure that he completely believed this, but the dim flicker of hope made him feel almost a hundred percent better.

The telephone didn't yield anything, there was nothing more than a fast busy signal when he listened into the receiver. He slammed the phone down in frustration, but he still felt better than he had a short time earlier. A plausible reason was all he needed. He decided that things would look better and make more sense when daylight arrived; Neil turned off the television and made his way up to his bedroom. He would close his door tonight so that when his parents got home, they would hopefully not notice him there and then they could all talk in the morning.

Everything is better in the morning, Neil thought.


	18. Chapter 18 June 27th

_Oh, one of these days at about twelve o'clock_

_This whole Earth is gonna reel and rock_

_Saints will tremble and cry for pain_

_For the Lord's gonna come in his heaven airplane._

Floyd sat at the kitchen table looking out at the sunrise, a cup of coffee in his hand. He wasn't really drinking it, it was simply part of the routine. _It was what he did._

The house was dead silent, which was probably why he had that damnable hymn stuck in his head. He wasn't positive where he had gotten it from, but he was reasonably sure it was something that his devoutly Baptist mother had taught him while he was young. It was maddening to him; like a telemarketer, the more insistent he was that it go away, the more determined it seemed that it was staying for good.

For the first time he could remember, "Can Do" Floyd Wilks was at a complete loss at what to do. He was completely alone now. When Amanda came down with the flu, she came down with it hard. And she went out hard. He remembered the terror in her eyes as she was choking to death on her own snot the night before. He tried to roll her over; he tried to do anything he could to help her. But in the end he wasn't able to help her any more than he could have helped Derek.

On top of that he was having these terrible dreams... Well, some of them were terrible anyway. He knew that once he settled back into The Routine, they would go away. It was only the stress that was making him a basketcase, and that could all be solved by going back to The Routine. The coffee was part of The Routine, and after that he was going to go outside and mow the lawn because that was also part of The Routine.

_Oh, one of these days..._

The song had to go away though, the song was not part of the The Routine. No, he would go out and mow the lawn today and avert his eyes from the fresh graves of the two people in the world he most loved, and he would get back into the daily grind. After that was all said and done he was going to go down and do some work on his plane. It was almost time for the airshow...the airshow was probably cancelled but it didn't matter, he was going to fly his plane anyway.

But the song, the song he could get out of his head any time he wanted. All it took was a little bit of willpower, and Floyd Wilks had willpower.

_...is gonna reel and rock..._

Floyd knew that he was fighting, fighting to keep from losing his sanity. One week ago life was happy and normal, today the entire world had been completely turned upside down. The power was still on but the gas was off, and so was the television. Once while Amanda was sleeping yesterday he went through all the channels looking for something, anything, to watch. Snow and static were all that greeted him, along with the occasional "We are experiencing technical difficulties" image.

Floyd was experiencing technical difficulties, Floyd was experiencing big fucking technical difficulties.

He kept expecting to get sick. Some small part of him was going so far as hoping that he would get the flu and die. But a few days back he finally came to the conclusion that he just wasn't going to get this. While everyone around him was getting sick and dying, he seemed to himself to be the only person on the face of the earth that wasn't getting sick with the flu. He thought that it was bitterly unfair, why was an old man still alive when it could have been his son or daughter-in-law that had been spared this illness. Why was he allowed to live and all the people that should have lived died?

He ran his fingers through three days of beard growth. He hadn't really realized that it had been that long since he had shaved, but looking back it seemed kind of silly. The world was coming to an end, Floyd didn't have time to shave. Couldn't bump anything else from his schedule.

_For the Lord's gonna come..._

He drained the last dregs of coffee in his cup and set it down on the table next to his straw hat. Bones creaking, he stood up and put that hat on his head and walked toward the back door, shakily and unevenly like a man that was going into shock.

The warm and fresh air outside almost made him feel normal again, almost. Birds were chirping high in the treetops and the slight breeze rustled the leaves together pleasantly. Other than that it was silent outside. After decades of living with the sounds of midwestern America's suburbs; it seemed so unnatural, so alien, for all signs of humanity to have completely vanished.

Although he hadn't gone more than twenty feet or so from his house since the chilling encounter at the store a few days eariler, Floyd had been peripherally aware that signs of life were changing outside. First the cars stopped going down the street and planes stopped flying overhead. Finally the gunshots, which admittantly were a rather new aspect to life around here, started to peter out and then disappeared entirely.

Casually he walked across the long grass in his bare feet toward the shed. He hadn't mowed the lawn since this entire debacle had begun and it was starting to show worse for the wear because of it. Taking a quick glance up at the sparse clouds and determining that it probably wasn't going to rain today, Floyd opened up his shed and wheeled out the old Toro lawnmower. It was in disrepair and needed an oil change badly, but Floyd would take care of that today. All in good time, suddenly it seemed as if there was plenty of time for anything.

It felt heavy as he pushed it though, he vaguely remembered that Derek had been the last person to mow the lawn a little over a week ago. He knelt down and unhooked the bag, pulling it away from the lawnmower itself. Sure enough, the grass clippings had not been cleaned out from that last time it was used, now they were old and rotting and had a mildly unpleasant musty smell to them.

"Damn boy" Floyd caught himself saying.

This stopped him and he suddenly felt his eyes well up. As if on cue a cloud passed in front of the sun and the world suddenly seemed very dreary again. Even though he promised himself he wouldn't, he turned and looked at the graves of his son and daughter-in-law underneath the old maple tree he had planted right after Derek was born. The emotional wall he had spent the morning constructing around himself had suddenly turned to powder and blown away with the summer breeze that now suddenly felt colder than it had a moment ago.

Side by side they were near the end, and side by side they would be forever after.

_"You will bury me next to Derek won't you?" _

It was the last coherent thing that Amanda had said to him, her voice terribly lucid in her last hour.

_"Of course I will sweetheart." _he told her as he gently stroked her hair.

An hour later she was gone. Though they never had a chance to get married, Floyd would forever think of Amanda as his son's wife.

Now she was gone and he was alone. The vibrant and beautiful young woman who was once the little girl that would scamper over and ask Floyd if she could help him wash his car. The adolescent girl that fought so hard to be accepted as "one of the guys" by Derek and won not only that acceptance but also his love.

He had held back his tears through her death but now they flowed freely down his cheeks. Hands shaking, he pulled the straw hat off of his head and dropped it to the ground as he approached the twin mounds of dirt. Emotions that he had reigned in and bottled up were breaking free like floodwaters that had finally become too much for a cracked and overstressed levee. They poured forth; Floyd Wilks fell to his knees in front of the graves as a wail of anguish tore it's way out of his throat.

Forward he fell into the soft cushion of tall grass, his body wracked with great and painful sobs. He cried at the feet of the two people he cherished most in this world, he cried as harder than he had in the last two decades, perhaps even harder than when his wife died. This was the second time he had suffered the agony of surviving; the agony of going on after someone that you loved had ended their journey. This time he didn't want to keep going, this time all he wanted to do was to stay here with his family until he too passed on.

Later; for there is always a later even when you think that the world has come to an end, Floyd found himself sitting in the grass. The clouds were gone and the sun was back out again. He was tired and sad, but too emotionally drained to shed any more tears - at least for right now. He looked around; things seemed okay again, not good but just "okay".

As he pulled himself up to his feet, he decided that the lawn had already waited more than a week, it could wait one more day. It was time to get the hell out of the house and do something.

It was time to head to the airport and work on his plane.


	19. Chapter 19

Just off of the highway was the smoldering wreck of a pair of cars that had met one another in an ugly way. If there was a fire department still in service around here, it was obvious to Claudia Donaldson that they had other things to do. The fire had spread away from the cars and burned down two houses before it thankfully went out on it's own. It was a lucky thing; if there were any wind today it would have been very likely that all of Lyndhurst, New Jersey would be up in flames right now.

She was glad to see that it wasn't. Mostly because she was hoping to find some food here. The little bit that she had grabbed in the city was starting to run low and this looked like a reasonably decent place to raid a grocery store for canned goods. That wasn't the entire reason though, she also liked the feel of this; the first small town she had been at in almost a month. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't like down south, and it still had that New Jersey sprawling ugliness to it. But overall, she was starting to feel good for the first time since her crawl through the Lincoln Tunnel the morning before.

Most of the sick were either dead or well on their way toward dying at this point. She still heard an occasional gunshot, or saw someone walking down the street in a fit of feverish delirium, but most of that was over now. In fact, she probably had heard more gunshots in a minute in Manhattan that she had heard in the last two hours here away from the Hudson River. She wasn't worried regardless; the weight of the M-16 slung over her shoulder was reassuring and hopefully would make a deterrent for anyone who was still well enough to cause her trouble.

Yesterday was long, very long.

After parting acquaintances with the lunatic a few blocks away from the tunnel, Claudia worked her way across the island to the George Washington Bridge. She made a stop in a designer clothing boutique through the remnants of its shattered window. She left with what she figured had to be ten thousand dollars worth of clothing, which made a couple outfits she might have assembled at Wal-Mart for fifty bucks.

The realization that not long ago she would have been killed in some of those neighborhoods for flashing that much money around was not lost on her. Neither was the realization that at this point anyone well enough to fire a gun has bigger issues and worries than what the label on the tank-top she was wearing said. Not that it mattered, clothes were clothes in her mind, she wasn't going to be having lunch with the President anyway, even if he was well enough to do tea and cookies.

So she found herself at the George Washington Bridge wearing designer clothing and a watch that easily would have cost her fifty thousand dollars the last time she was in New York. The bridge was surreal, cars packed the top and the bottom decks like sardines, at some places they appeared to have even drove up onto the catwalk to pull around the cars stopped in front of them. Several spots along the bridge were smoking as the cars on them burned solemnly.

She started to notice, with mounting dread, that there was no easy way to cross the bridge. It looked as though either way she went she was going to be crawling over and around cars for the entire length; and if she had ever realized how wide the Hudson River was, she certainly never did so much as she did at that moment. She decided to take the top deck, the bright side being that she would at least have a nice view and plenty of fresh air as she was climbing over minivans.

Two bodies were gathered around a car near the entrance. She tried not to look at them but was unsuccessful. One was a nude woman that was handcuffed to a car door; she had apparently been raped several times before she was shot in the head. Next to her was probably the rapist, a man whose head was nearly gone in a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was wearing Marine Corp fatigues and had apparently shoved the barrel of his M-16 into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

_Sorry to fuck and run baby, but I plan on going out before my appointment with the Superflu. _

Charming gentleman, Claudia thought. You know that civilization is definitely on its way out the door when the people that you are trusting to enforce the laws are the one breaking the laws.

Gingerly, she knelt down and pulled the M-16 out of the corpse's (thankfully loose) hands. She made an effort to wipe the congealed blood and brain matter off of the barrel before she slung the weapon over her shoulder. She was hoping that she wouldn't meet anyone like the guy from earlier, or the asshole from yesterday. But it was better safe than sorry. She considered looking for extra magazines, but drew the line at fishing through the corpse's pockets for more ammo.

Some things she just didn't think she had the stomach for today.

Instead she turned and focused her attention on the task at hand; the enormous concrete and steel bridge that loomed in front of her. It appeared to be deserted, and if there was any military presence guarding it, they had since departed. There were no sick people here that she could see, none among the living anyway. It occurred to her that anyone that was sick right now had more pressing matters on their mind than trying to get into Jersey.

It was overcast, and a stiff, cold breeze blew over her as she stepped onto the bridge. Her boots made muffled thumps as she walked in silence through the auto graveyard that had sprung up here. It was easy going at first. But the further she went, the more congested the traffic had become. In some places cars had been torched, in other places they had been overturned. Immediately Claudia wanted to be somewhere else; this was a place of death.

A few hundred feet onto the bridge she turned around and looked into the city, the sight was chilling. The skyline loomed up above her; smoke was rising from several of the skyscrapers as unattended fires burned within them. She could dimly imagine the city fifty or a hundred years from now; a graveyard and monument to the arrogance of human civilization.

It was time to go.

She turned and made her way in between the railing and an overturned semi trailer. A car was pancaked beneath it; she could see a single gray and waxy-looking child's hand protruding from one of the windows. The fingers were gaily painted with pink nail polish.

Claudia moved a little bit faster, determined not to look at any more dead bodies and just keep her mind focused on the task at hand. Even the fact that she had the cloudy sky above her, it didn't make the bridge feel any less claustrophobic. At times she had to tell herself to slow down; to calm down. For the most part it didn't work, she found herself almost at a run, bouncing across the hoods of cars in places there was no way to run in between them.

Her progress came to a sudden halt at the middle of the bridge.

A huge gaping hole in both the top and bottom decks had completely torn apart the entire roadway. The damaged area was line with twisted and blackened rebar; jutting out and ringing the hole like misshapen teeth in a gaping maw. It looked like someone had accidentally (or maybe deliberately) detonated some kind of explosive device. The pavement was cracked in several placed and Claudia, for the first time, wondered if just maybe the bridge was no longer structurally sound.

She looked around frantically for how she was going to get across the gap, but the only way still available to her was walking out onto the massive cables that the bridge was suspended from. Her stomach gave a slow lurch as she looked down at the distance to the Hudson River below. To her it looked like a million miles. She walked over to the edge of the bridge and gingerly she stepped out onto the massive main cable and put her hand around the descending support cable. It seemed to sway back and forth in a long and slow roll. The very motion was enough to make Claudia sick to her stomach.

The cable was thick; walking on it was just a little narrower than walking on a curved sidewalk. But it was treacherous as well; the surface of it was smooth and did not take much for even the rugged soles of her boots to slide across its surface. She knew that it would take just one little mistake and _"So long corporal."_ Worse, the support cables were stretched out further apart than it had originally appeared; she would have to walk four or five steps between each one without having anything to hold on to.

Looking back for a moment at the city, she decided she would risk it. Anything was better than remaining on Manhattan Island. Slowly, one foot in front of another she crept from one strand to the next, her stomach leaping up into her throat as each gust of wind tested her balance. At one point she nudged a chuck of concrete off of the central cable and watched it tumble through the air and make a small and insignificant splash in the water hundreds of feet below.

Immediately chastising herself for looking down, she forced her eyes back onto the cable in front of her, sliding one foot in front of the other until each support strand came within arms reach. She grabbed hold of it and hugged her arms around it as she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly for several seconds before continuing on. It seemed like an eternity as she made it to the first strand, and then halfway to the other side, and the three-quarters of the way. Finally she was so near her goal that she could taste it, the next support strand would have her over solid roadway again and from there she could see that it was smooth sailing to the other end of the bridge.

The nearness of success made her cocky, and her mistake was a small but grave one. Her foot slid as it touched some gravelly sediment on the cable. She could have recovered except that a gust of wind struck her at that exact same moment.

Eyes widening in shock, she felt herself lose her balance. Claudia's arm swung out in a last and desperate attempt to grab hold of the final cable but she touched nothing but open air. A scream escaped her lips as she fell backwards toward the gaping hole in the bridge and the churning river below it. She fell backwards, knowing that she had passed the point of no return; her feet no longer on the cable. Arms flailing, she tried to catch anything she could on her way down, she could feel her fingertips strike the roadway that was so close she could touch it, but there was nothing for her hands to get purchase.

Suddenly, with a jerk and a searing pain in her right shoulder, she stopped. Her scream cut off when she realized she was not falling but had come to a stop just beneath the roadway of the bridge's upper deck. Wide-eyed and looking up, the shoulder strap of the rifle slung across her shoulder had caught on a jutting spike of rebar. She was now suspended above the Hudson River by an inch and a half strap hanging on a metal bar. Her struggling caused a large chunk of concrete to work it's way loose and plummet off of the upper deck and fall the terrifying distance to the water's surface.

Almost hyperventilating, she looked around for some means of escape, some way of getting back up to the roadway. Her arm was already screaming out in agony as the blood flow was cut off by the strap cutting into her shoulder. She was seriously surprised that the fall didn't dislocate it. Looking around rapidly to find a solution to her predicament, she noticed the lower deck.

She grabbed hold of the jutting rebar first with one hand and then the other. When she pulled herself up slightly, the pressure on her shoulder slackened as the rifle strap came loose and fell off of the metal spike, the M-16 slapping down against her back and shoulder painfully.

Quickly, she looked down and judged the distance to the lower deck to be between twelve and fourteen feet. There was a car in the way that if she could land on he rooftop of it, she could cut her fall down to maybe nine or ten feet. But with her arms tiring, she saw no other choice.

Knowing that if she broke a leg or an ankle here, she was probably going to die here, she slowly started swinging back and forth. Each time her swing widened until she swung in the direction away from the hole and let go. She landed on the windshield of the car she was aiming for; the laminated glass cracking into an enormous circular starburst. She tumbled backwards off of it onto the hood, landing face down on the dark blue of the Toyota Corolla. When she opened her eyes she once again found herself staring straight down into the water, the car itself stopped right on the edge of the tear in the bridge.

Breaking into a cold sweat she scrambled backwards and off of the side of the car. She landed painfully on her knees on the cold hard pavement of the lower deck. Dirty and smell it was, but blessedly stable. Claudia rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. God willing, she told herself, she would never do anything that stupid again.

Less than twenty minutes later, she emerged from the lower deck back into the open air. Fort Lee, New Jersey didn't look that much better than Manhattan did, but at least she wasn't on an island with no escape now. The entire country spread out before her and she could go anywhere, and the anywhere that she was planning on was back home to that south. She turned once she was well passed the bridge and gave one last look at New York City. There was a billboard near the bridge which had originally read "Welcome to New York", but someone had cryptically spray-painted over New York and replaced it with "LUD". And further on, at the first concrete support for the bridge someone (probably the same person) had also written in large capital letters: _""My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"_

Without knowing exactly why, both of these desecrations made Claudia feel uneasy, maybe even scared. She had enough of this place anyway; she turned away and didn't look back.

That was all more than twenty-four hours ago, Claudia had spent the night in Fort Lee in an old motel (she didn't figure the manager lying dead at the counter would mind.) And the next day she started walking south. She made her way down to Lyndhurst, still with the rifle that had saved her life slung over her shoulder. She knew that at some point she would want to find a motorcycle or better yet an army Humvee. But for right now, she was more than content just taking her time and walking.

Tomorrow might bring something different, but right now she felt more free than she had in her entire life.


	20. Chapter 20 June 28th

"There is _so_ no way that I'm going to do that."

Andy grinned at Samantha's comment as she watched him impale a nightcrawler on the glittering barb of his fishhook. He was working by the soft white glow of the electric lantern on the ground between them. It was a beautiful morning...if you could even call it morning yet. Dawn was still a few hours away when Andy, unable to sleep from his nightmares, gathered up a couple fishing poles and his tackle box. He woke up Sam and the two of them walked down to the lake to go fishing in the early pre-dawn hours.

It was a time of transition; the crickets were chirping the rich and deep song that only someone who has grown up in the middle of nowhere can truly appreciate. At the same time, the birds were beginning to chirp; rising from their night's sleep and sensing the cusp of morning about to pass over them. It was a time of transition for Andy and Samantha as well; the two of them quickly and easily departed from the years of animosity and settled into a quick and easy friendship. Easy enough that every once in a while they even managed to forget what was going on in the world around them and just live in the moment.

"You want to try to make sure you spear it through the guts" Andy explained to her, demonstrating. "The catfish can smell it, they are more likely to go for it that way."

Samantha was watching this with a queasy revulsion.

"I can't believe that you got me out here to fish in the middle of the night." She said.

"I can't believe that you have lived your whole life here and you have never gone fishing." Andy retorted, smiling.

He finished baiting the pole and handed it to Samantha before he started with his own, pulling another nightcrawler out of the pail he had gathered them in yesterday.

"So what's next?" Sam asked.

"Well, you cast your line into the water and you try to catch a fish." He told her.

"No." Sam said, shaking her head. "I mean, what are we going to do next."

Andy appeared to not comprehend her question for a long moment and then clarity returned to his eyes as he set the fishing pole down on the ground, baited but forgotten.

"I've been giving some thought to that." he said "I pulled out a bunch of road maps and took a look. The town is real enough; it's right in the middle of Nebraska.

Hesitatingly, he added "I just don't know, are we going to do something as crazy as travel across half the country to see if Mother Abigail is really there? And then if we do that, then what?"

Sam smiled and shrugged.

"I don't know, just think of it as an adventure. We can get some bikes and make our way across the country. How long could it possibly take us? Two weeks? Three?" she asked him.

Over the years, Andy had forgotten how adventurous Samantha could be. He dimly recalled her ability to get into trouble just through sheer mischievousness. She was willing to go and do this without a second thought, not so much because she wanted to see if this old woman really existed, but more just to get out and away from town and explore something new and different.

Every argument for why to stay right where they were flashed through Andy's mind. It was safe here, it would most likely be chaos in the outside world right now. And besides that, he really kind of liked it being just the two of them. After they had buried Sam's family, he had moved into her house because it was so much bigger and it had a guest room that he could sleep in. They had become something that under the conditions that existed a month ago they could never have been; they had become friends.

Yesterday had been an incredible day, even if it was still laced with the sadness of both of their cumulative losses. They talked and played cards and board games, they drank instant iced tea. They did everything they could do to just have a good time and try to forget the horrors that had befallen them in the days before. All past bad feelings were gone. Andy honestly and truly enjoyed the freckled girl's company.

But still. There was a part of him, a big part that _wanted_ to go to Nebraska. A part of him _wanted_ to go into the west and have an adventure; to go and see if this Mother Abigail really did exist. And for the first time, the impulsive and irrational parts of his mind were overriding the rational.

The though caused him to smile.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" He asked.

Sam only nodded, smiling back at him.

"Unless you are talking about fishing," she added quickly. "I'm not at all sure about that, and I guarantee that I'm not going to be cleaning anything you catch."

"How could you possibly spend so much time at the lake and not fish?" Andy asked suddenly, shaking his head.

Sam stood up and kicked her sandals off.

"Like this." She said as she ran a couple steps to the embankment and jumped into the water with a splash.

Andy jumped up, knocking over the electric lantern as he ran over to the edge of the water and peered in after her. The surface of the water had become calm, Sam's entrance into it barely even disturbed the surface. Although he couldn't see where she had gone, he could only think of was that horrible dream he had. He didn't _want _to look in the surface of the water, he kept expecting to see the eyes staring back at him like burning embers out of a fireplace.

Just as he was about to start worrying, Sam burst to the surface with a gasp. Droplets of water flew into the air, catching the moonlight. They looked like hundreds of sparkling and luminescent diamonds falling back to the surface of the water. She grinned up at him, her white T-shirt clinging to her skin, the water on her arms and face catching the light in a way that she seemed to shine and glow like an angel.

"Com'on Andy!" She said. "This is a lot more fun than fishing."

Andy slipped his shoes off and jumped into the water, he immediately surfaced and gasped for air. The water wasn't just cold, it was downright frigid. Fortunately it wasn't all that deep and he could touch the ground, the feet sinking slightly into the muck-covered bottom. He tried hard not to think about what was down there buried in the layers of silt and decaying plant matter.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed.

The teenage girl laughed at him, splashing him playfully.

"Don't be a wimp" she chided "It's not anywhere near that bad. Besides, when you start moving around, you're going to get used to it."

"Anytime someone says: 'It will warm up when you get in and start moving around.', that means that it's too cold." He remarked with his arms clutched around his chest, shivering.

"Com'on over here" she said, ignoring the comment "Let's swim across."

Andy took a few steps further, the water getting gradually deeper.

"I don't swim very good," he said a little doubtfully, his teeth chattering.

"Oh my God" she said, treading water toward him and grinning. "You're telling me that you have lived your whole life beside a lake and you don't swim very well."

Before he could reply she had swam over and slipped her arms around him. She spun him around facing the shore behind them.

"Just tread water, keep yourself up. Let me to all of the swimming" She instructed.

Flustered, Andy said nothing. He just did as she told him and kicked to keep himself above the water as she held onto him with one arm and swam forward by kicking her legs and her free arm. Normally he would be a little bit panicked to be in the water where he couldn't touch bottom, but not now. Now his mind was focused only on the indescribable feel of Sam's body pressed up against his as she did most of the work to carry the both of them to the far shore.

If the feeling of their bodies pressing together had the same galvanizing effect on Samantha, she didn't show it. She simply watched over his shoulder, swimming the distance in smooth and even strokes. She was an incredibly strong swimmer, and if the exertion of carrying the weight of herself and another was causing her any difficulty, she didn't show that either. They moved on slowly in silence, Andy taking the time to look around and realize how peaceful and awe-inspiring this place really was in the darkness and moonlight.

Suddenly he could feel the lake bottom. They had made it to the other side of the lake. Sam didn't stop holding onto him though even as the two of them stepped out at the other side onto the sandy shore. Andy looked at Samantha questioningly, he had planned on asking her if anything was wrong but the thought fled from his head as though it had never been there to begin with when she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. His eyes snapped open widely in shock, his body going rigid. But after a moment it wore off. He wrapped his arms around her, the two of them melting into each other.

For Andrew Verner and Samantha Mackenzie, time and place were temporarily suspended. The world around them ceased to have any place or meaning in their lives. Andy neither recalled how he came to be lying atop her on the coarse sand, nor did he care. The early morning gave way to a sunrise; and before their lips had finally parted, the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon.

Andy looked at her carefully as she herself looked up at him. Her appearance was comical, adorably so. Her hair was disheveled and filled with drying sand from the beach, her freckled face also marred by streaks of sand and dirt. He had recalled asking himself once how a girl could be so popular without being drop-dead gorgeous. He didn't mean that she wasn't pretty, because she was, but she was by no means beautiful.

But now to look at her he was certain that she indeed was beautiful.

Could it be perception, he wondered. Had he just completely fallen for her and that was what made her beautiful in his mind?

"What are you thinking about?" Sam asked, smiling up at him.

"I was just thinking that you're beautiful." He admitted.

_Right answer._ He thought when he saw the way that the girl's face lit up brighter than the morning sunrise coming up between the mountains yonder. She pulled her arms back and interlaced her fingers behind the back of her head. Andy blushed a little bit and quickly looked away when he realized that he could the see the dark disks and slight protrusion of Samantha's nipples showing slightly through the still damp T-shirt she was wearing.

He looked back to her face and found that her expression had changed. For a moment he found himself ready to stammer out an apology to her for what he'd seen, but then he realized that the look on her face wasn't one of shock or of anger; it was one of pain. She quickly sat up, almost pushing him off of her and she examined her arm quickly. There was a stream of blood running down from a puncture on her lower arm, a few inches above her wrist.

Andy quickly looked around and then he saw it; there was an old and rusty nail, deteriorated into almost non-existence. It was protruding from the sand and was the same brownish black as most of the pebbles on the beach, almost invisible unless you were looking for it. He dug his hand into the ground and pulled it out along with a handful of rocks and coarse sand. The nail was long and had probably been there for years. It was just waiting for someone to come walking barefoot...or for someone to accidentally lay on it after a long make-out session.

"Shit..." Sam said, wiping the blood away from her arm and looking up at Andy with a pained expression.

Andy only smiled at her and stood up, offering her his hands. "Com'on Sam, let's go back home and get some hydrogen peroxide or something on that. We don't want it to get infected."

He had only just pulled her to her feet when he saw the enormous raven sitting on a rock about twenty feet behind them. It let out a loud and angry "caw" as though it was an acknowledgment of being discovered. The sight of it shouldn't have made Andy's blood run cold, but it did.


	21. Chapter 21

A stiff and aggravating wind blew through the town of Hinkley, Texas. It was a wind filled with coarse grit that tasted of alkali. It was the taste of failed dreams, defaulted mortgages and lost fortunes. The wind never stopped here; it scoured every surface it touched. Houses that had once been brightly painted became the nothing color of the desert within the space of only a few months.

Although Hinkley was dead, it could not really have said to be alive before the plague either. The streets were paved only with dirt and lined with shabby houses badly in need of repair. A screen door continuously opened and slammed shut in the wind, the only sound in a failed town. It looked not that much different from the ghost towns of old, relics and remnants of an age that had long since passed into antiquity.

But here the abrasive grit-filled winds made houses that were only a few years old appear to be those ancient relics of an old civilization.

Ten years ago the Centerfield Mining Conglomerate opened up the King Solomon copper mine just outside of town. It was found by accident while test drilling for oils - a spectacularly pure and rich vein of copper. At the behest of the CMC, the town of Hinkley sprung up around the new mine nearly overnight. The displaced and the unemployed from all around came to Hinkley to build lives for themselves. The company happily rented them housing and gave them menial and backbreaking jobs in the King Solomon mine in return for a meager paycheck and unfair health benefits.

Still, things went well, for a time. The city flourished and prospered in the early years of the mine. The CMC made a fortune as the price of copper had increased exponentially during the last decade. Many of its residents too, through long and hard work had built a middle-class lifestyle for themselves here in Hinkley. Plans were big to pave all of the streets and divert a highway to make it easier to travel to and from the town.

But then everything went bust. The vein of pure copper in the King Solomon mine turned out to be pitifully small. Only a few years after the mine had opened, the copper dwindled and then disappeared completely. Repeated tests all around the area suggested that the mine was nothing more than a lucky fluke; the copper was completely gone and the mine was gone with it. Only years after it had first appeared, the Centerfield Mining Conglomerate pulled out of Hinkley leaving it nothing but a desolate husk of a town filled with unemployed residents lured here by a failed dream.

When the flu came, the residents of Hinkley met it with the same meek submission that they met the end of their livelihoods a few years before. And unlike many places, the Hinkley after the flu didn't really look any different than Hinkley before it.

Besides the wind and the slamming door, only a single sound was coming form anywhere in town. It was a loud and carrying voice coming from the edge of town. Coming from with the Hinkley Community Church.

The doors were wide open, allowing the wind to blow its grit into the sanctuary. But if the sole living person inside noticed, he didn't care.

The people of Hinkley needed God.

The pews were filled with people, the many residents that had come to the church for a last effort to ask the Lord to spare them, or maybe their children from death by the Superflu. Now some were on the floors, some were on the pews, some were sitting, and some were lying down. All of them were dead.

All of them except the man at the pulpit, the dark priest.

Wearing all black, he looked like a stern and puritanical preacher of old. He looked like the kind of man that would beat a child within an inch of his life and tell him that it was for disobeying God. He was a man that over the years had found himself skipping from church to church all over the country. Each of them were churches in towns that had fallen into a bad streak of luck. All of them the Dark Priest would eventually depart from amidst rumors of suspicion, distrust and sexual perversion.

All of these towns found themselves in worse shape when the priest left than they were when he arrived.

Nobody knew where the Dark Priest originally came from. He certainly wasn't forthcoming and it was entirely possible that he was the only person in the world that knew who he was and where he had come from. For the Dark Priest, who in this city was known as Paul Lindsey, kept his real identity a secret that was closely guarded unto death. Nobody knew who he really was, nobody COULD know who he really was.

"And I tell you, friends." He shouted. "The time of the LORD has come! He has come to carry away the evils of this world and to set up his kingdom in its place! The whore of Babylon has been carried away to the PIT of FIRE, and the wicked and sinful have been taken away by the Lord's angels to HELL!"

He held his hands up, to silence the hushed murmurs from the congregation that were heard only in his mind. The congregation itself had not muttered so much as an "amen". They all were, however, a very willing audience.

The madman raised his hands to the heavens. His fingers spasmed with awe and fervor, God was obviously about to rain down his blessings upon him. Why wouldn't he? Why else would have still be alive if not to do the work of the Lord here in the final days of Earth?

"Jesus! Look down on your humble servant. You have destroyed the wicked and the sinful so that the righteous and Godly may rise up and take their places to do your good work." he beseeched.

His hands shook, his feet shook, his entire body shook.

"I say thank'ya Jesus! I say thank'ya Jesus! I say tha..."

His words tapered off. There was a presence there in the room and he could feel it. The Lord was ready to tell him what he needed him to do, how he was going to serve him. This was going to be the most important moment in the entire life of the Dark Priest.

"I can feel you here Lord" the priest shouted to the rafters of the weathered and wind-beaten church. "I feel your holy presence in this place Lord! I beg you Lord, give my YOUR WORD!"

Outside the wind had picked up, it had picked up a banshee howl. Had anyone else in Hinkley been alive, they would have been fearful right now at the least; it was as though a hurricane was tearing through the center of town. What was midday only a few minutes ago was now as dark as night with a wind powerful enough to shred houses off of their foundations.

The Priest dropped to his knees; his hands still upraised in submission to his God.

_"'Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things."_

The Priest's hands dropped and his eyes snapped open in shock, his mouth a wide "O" of awe. _He_ was here in this room, speaking to him.

"Lord!" he finally choked out. "Is that really you?"

What was open air only a moment ago was now inhabited by a man wearing jeans and a denim jacket. It was a man that anyone who was sane could never have associated with the Son of God. Whereas the Dark Priest's presence was unwholesome and dirty, this man's presence was one of pure evil. He was perpetually wearing a grin - it was the kind of grin that might make you laugh, but not a good laugh; it was the laugh that you make when you are trying not to scream in terror. The man's name was Randall Flagg.

"You called..." Flagg said. "And I have come, Herbert Payne."

Herbert's looked up and saw a white robed man wearing a crown of thorns upon his head. Denim had become white silk, cowboy boots had become a pair of humble sandals. The Dark Priest could even see droplets of blood flow down from twin nail holes in the palms of the man's hands. He immediately planted his face back to the wooden floorboards of the church, striking them so hard the blood flowed out of his nose, dying the wood bright red.

"Lord, I haven't heard anyone call me that in so long. I'm so sorry, Jesus. I have asked for forgiveness so many times, I didn't mean to kill those girls, Lord." he blubbered.

Herbert, The Dark Priest, rocked himself forward and back. His tears fell in a torrent, mixing with his blood as it fell to the floor.

"Why did you forsake me Lord?" he sobbed. "Why didn't you give me the willpower to keep myself from killing them? Why did you make me the way I am, Lord? I never wanted this, I never wanted any of..."

"Shhh Herbert." Flagg told him as he kneeled down to pat the weeping man on the shoulder. "All is forgiven, you have proven your faith many times over. You have been running from your past for too long. You have been trying to forget who you are for too long, it is time for you to do the good works that I have planned for you."

Herbert Payne looked up at Jesus Christ. It filled him with wonder and awe that he could be forgiven and still find work that he could do in God's kingdom. It had never seemed possible that he could really do the Lord's work in any way other than by being a travelling preacher living under an assumed name to protect him from being brought back to stand trial for those horrible crimes almost a decade before.

"I will do anything you ask of me, Lord." Herbert whispered.

The Lord opened the palm of his hand and there, right over the eternally bleeding wound where he was nailed to the cross was a stone. It was an ugly thing, black and polished with a red flaw running through it the color of the blood pooling in the hand around it. To anyone else it would look as far from Christ-like as they could imagine.

And even to Herbert, he had a moment's doubt. He looked up at his Lord and Savior for a moment and instead of Christ was a denim-wearing madman. He looked like the kind of man that would bring together a cult and induce them all to drink poison in the name of God rather than someone who would die for the sins of man.

But then it was Jesus again, and internally Herbert belittled himself for his lack of faith even when faced with the object of his religion. He took the stone from the (grinning madman) Lord and began crying in earnest.

"Bless you, Herbert Payne." the imposter told him. "Now this is what I require of you. Do this and you will find the kingdom of Heaven close at hand."

And then the man bent down to Herbert's ear.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully."


	22. Chapter 22 June 29th

Among the things that no scientist can explain is the concept of "June Gloom". There is no plausible theory why at some point during the month of June does the sun and warmth suddenly turn sour and give way to a few days (or maybe a few weeks) of bad weather. Yet it's something that happens, it's something that is awaited with the same certainty that the sun will rise in the morning.

June gloom had officially struck the little town of Oxford, Pennsylvania. A cloying mist cascaded down from the omnipresent cloud covering, it was the kind of irritating mist that soaked into everything slowly and insidiously. You don't even realize that it's happening until you find yourself cold and wet, the mist soaking through to your skin and carrying a clammy coldness with it.

The carnival had come to town in Oxford. Or rather, it had come to Oxford as the opening act to the superflu. It was one of those carnivals that had a distinct feeling of seediness to it. The stalls were caked with dirt. The paint on the rides was dull and chipped, and even where it wasn't it was clear that the color was somewhat different from what it had originally looked like. It was the kind of carnival staffed by middle-aged, slightly overweight and plain-looking crews of human wreckage; refugees from God knows where who had joined up with the carnival to escape from God knows what.

The carnies had long since departed and now the carnival stood in the rented parking lot of the local Costco. The stilled Ferris wheel loomed over the carnival like a dead soldier who sacrificed his life to defend a forgotten and insignificant hill. Less than two weeks ago this place was filled with screaming and smiling children who were riding the bumper cars and eating cotton candy. Now the place looked decayed and lonely, another culturally dubious casualty of the end of the world.

Not seeming to mind the pervasive mist one bit, Claudia Donaldson sat on the hood of the Landrover she had come across the day before. It wasn't the grand military humvee that she was hoping for, but it was new and clean and the dealership let her have it without signing papers, no credit check and with no money down. It even had a winch mounted on the front that had already come in handy a couple times for dragging abandoned cars out of the road when no other options presented themselves.

She used the back roads as much as she could as she made her way out of Jersey and into Pennsylvania. The freeways were almost universally clogged with cars, and even where they weren't it was impossible to drive at any high speed safely. And besides, Claudia enjoyed taking drives using the less frequented roads, it all added to this bizarre and grand sense of adventure she had been feeling since her trip into New York. Plus, it was even better now that she had gotten away from the coast a little bit and no longer had to deal with the unavoidable urban sprawl that New Jersey offered.

She cast aside the empty Coke can and the empty bag of chips she had been munching on and decided to take a look around at the carnival. It didn't look like a good day to go on any rides, had the option even been open to her, but she had been travelling all morning and she could use a little bit of diversion. There were thankfully few bodies scattered around in this place besides a single corpse that was sitting in one of the bumper cars, enveloped by a voracious cloud of flies.

_Why would anyone choose such a horrible place to die?_ Claudia thought.

It was like some kind of sick joke. Imagine if that guy had been told two weeks ago _"you're going to die of the flu sitting in a bumper car at some third rate carnival in the Costco parking lot."_ The thought was unsettling. She had no intention of dying anytime soon, but if she did she would prefer it to be somewhere outside. Somewhere with the open sky above her, even if the weather was as bad as it was today. Anything would be better than to die in some smelly bumper car, sitting on the cheap vinyl seats that had been patched and repatched so often that most likely none of the original material still remained.

Claudia quickly moved past the rides and into the stalls with the games set up in them. She didn't see anyone around the area, but she was still reassured to have the Beretta in its underarm holster, the newest addition to her growing arsenal of weapons. It's weight felt comforting to her, she trusted that it was going to be one hell of a surprise to the first person that took her for an easy mark. For good measure she tested the weapon right after finding it by emptying an entire clip in quick succession into an aluminum can. The can jumped around twenty feet away from her in its death dance. By the time she quit firing, it was unrecognizable as anything but a small shredded pile of metal.

She stopped at a stall with a set of three cast-iron milk bottles stood up into a pyramid. The object was to throw a baseball and knock over the pyramid in one dry, the trick was that the bottle were so damned heavy that it took nothing short of a miracle from God to knock them over. However if the (snowball's chance in hell) winner succeeded in his effort, he got his choice of large but hysterically cheap stuffed animals to give to his undiscriminating significant other.

Small chance or not, Claudia was feeling lucky. She picked up a baseball and, after a pretty good imitation of a wind-up, threw the ball at the assembly of containers. She missed completely, the ball striking the table the bottles were arrayed upon, causing it to bounce back at her. She narrowly ducked as it sailed over her head and bounced its way merrily down the alleyway back toward her parked car.

Claudia laughed.

It seemed like a strange and alien sound. How long had it been since she had last laughed?

She wasn't sure, but it felt good. It felt really good. And if it takes almost getting brained by a baseball to feel that good, then Claudia was happy to take the risk. It seemed to her that it was a sin to laugh and be happy with so many millions of people dead, but at the same time it felt almost as bad to resign oneself to agony and despair after being lucky enough to still be alive.

Regardless, she was determined that the little pyramid of bottles would mock her no longer. She grabbed another baseball off of the splintered wooden countertop and threw it. This time she connected reasonably well. She hit the triangle just off center and the top bottle landed flew through the air and landed on the ground with a clatter. One of the bottom bottles fell over, it was only the third one that remained upright, and even it wobbled unsteadily for a moment before coming to rest.

Overall it wasn't bad. She did not win exactly, but she wasn't going to tell if nobody else didn't. She leaned over the counter and removed one of the large plush lions from off of the rack. She examined it for a moment and then decided that her work here was done, and with the stuffed animal under her arm she walked back in the direction of the Landrover with her spoils of war.

**II**

_Lord, you're beautiful_

_And your face is all I see_

_For when your eyes are on this child_

_Your grace abounds to me._

Claudia's eyes snapped open and her hand darted immediately for the pistol under her arm. She leapt to her feet in panic when she realized that it wasn't there.

Quickly, she spun around in a complete circle. All around her was nothing but an endless field of corn. The surreal feeling of it was not lost on her, but it didn't feel much different from the surreal feeling she had been having ever since being given live ammunition with the orders of keeping a million or so crazed Yankees fans from entering New Jersey. In a way, this was just more of the same.

_What the hell am I doing here anyway? _She wondered. _I'm not here, I'm not-- I went to sleep in the Landrover... that's where I am... not in the middle of some godforsaken cornfield..._

The singing though, the singing was what brought her back down and made her realize that everything was okay. It sounded nothing at all like her mother's voice and yet reminded her of her mom all the same. It was like the old woman's voice was maternalism personified.

But regardless, Claudia found herself walking through the corn, drawn to the voice even if she didn't make a conscious decision to seek it out. Louder and louder it got along with the accompanied strumming of the guitar until at last Claudia reached the edge of the cornfield and walked out into a sparse and marginally maintained yard at the rear of an old farmhouse.

A tire swing hung from an old oak tree in the middle of the yard. It made Claudia wax nostalgic, it looked so much like the tire swing that her and her brothers would take turns riding on in their backyard as carefree children. It wasn't even a decade ago, but at this point it felt more like a lifetime, possible a score of lifetimes ago. And it was through the middle of that tire, worn with age and the use of countless children, that she saw the source of the singing and the strumming guitar.

Still knowing that this was all a dream, but at the same time feeling somehow doubtful, Claudia walked across the yard carefully. At one point she even reached for her weapon in its underarm holster, but neither the Beretta pistol nor its holster were there. She faltered for a few steps, remembering that her firearm was gone and feeling very naked and vulnerable without it. But on the other hand, she didn't see what such an old woman could do to hurt her.

She took a couple steps forward and then the dream (vision?) seemed to fade and darken. The tire swing, the old woman, everything seemed to twist and fade; to lose tangibility.

Suddenly a hand grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. She was no longer on the farm but back in New York. She was standing amidst the traffic and death on the George Washington Bridge once again. The only difference was that now she wasn't alone, she found herself staring curiously into the eyes of a grinning madman. In the back of he head, some lunatic voice told her that you should never match denim with denim. That fashion faux pas went unheeded by the man in front of her, his jean jacket matched the color of his pants almost perfectly.

She looked at him questioningly for a moment before he grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her backward, hard. She fell backwards and realized that the man had pushed her through the rift in the bridge. She stopped just as she had the first time, hanging from the strap on her rifle. A single spike of rebar was the only thing that was saving her from falling to her death below. She screamed when she looked down and saw that the water was gone and in its place was broken and jagged rocks of obsidian hundreds of feet beneath her.

She looked back up in terror and was greeted with an entirely different sight. New York as it was had disappeared and all that remained was the remnants of the tortured husks of buildings, blackened and gouged with the exposed skeletons of steel that were once concealed beneath their concrete exteriors. The sky was the sooty black of ash and smelled of decay and fire. But the terrors of her surroundings were nothing like the terror of the man in front of her. The man in jeans was gone and in his place was a demon, and grim and macabre parody of a man twisted and misshapen. He looked like death himself come to claim her and carry her to Hades.

The scream was pinched off in her throat, she found herself unable to speak and unable to even breathe as the terrible image in front of her kneeled down with a bloody knife in his hand. She only watched him wide-eyed as he kneeled to look down at her.

"You will come into the west, Claudia. You will come to me and I will reward you for your service." The beast said, its voice like two granite slabs rubbing together. "You will come to me and I will give you everything you have ever desired."

Claudia shook her head, still unable to so much as take a breath of the fetid air.

"Yes, you will." It said to her, grinning terribly. "Because if you don't, you will die."

With one swing of the knife, the beast severed her lifeline, the strap that was holding her on the bridge. She fell backward, screaming and holding her hands up to her head in vain futility to prevent the ground from rushing up to meet her.

**III**

Screaming in terror, Claudia reached sat up, instinctively reaching to her side and drawing the pistol there. She heard the grunt of surprise even before she saw where it came from. The dark vision of New York and its sinister inhabitant was quickly fading from her mind as she found herself (curiouser and curiouser, Alice would have said) face to face with a man that, comically, had almost the exact same terrified expression on his face that she did. They both found themselves pointing handguns at each other; both of them totally scared out of their wits.

For a moment Claudia was unable to comprehend where she was or even how she got there. All she knew was that she was lying asleep across the back seat of the Landrover with the doors open when she was accosted (or maybe just "slightly disturbed") by this man in a police officer's uniform. But after a few moments, realization started to dawn on her and she realized how young the man in front of her really was; if he were any older than she was, she would have been truly amazed. His uniform was dirty, torn and stained in placed, it looked like it had been through as much in the past few days as she had.

"Are you planning on shooting me?" Claudia asked cautiously, her gun still leveled at the face of the cop.

The officer blinked a couple times, as though trying to process the ludicrous statement in his head.

"N-no" he stuttered. "Are you planning on shooting me?"

Claudia looked at her own weapon and then back to the man (boy).

"I don't think so." She admitted, the whole encounter seemed surreal.

"Can I put the gun down?" He asked her, ridiculously, after a very long moment of uncomfortable silence.

Claudia didn't respond, but after a moment nodded a couple times. The two of them together cautiously lowered their sidearms. The officer, at least, seemed visibly relieved at the turn of events.

"I'm sorry about that." He told her, sliding his weapon back into its holster. "I thought you were dead, I haven't seen anyone alive since yesterday afternoon and they were both pretty badly messed up."

"The flu?" She asked.

The boy nodded. "When I left Cleveland, the place was a nightmare."

Claudia climbed out of the Landrover to stand next to the guy. He was tall, even taller than Claudia and would have been slyly handsome had he not been scared out of his wits only a moment before.

"It was that bad?" She asked, fearing a multitude of "New York City" type experiences all across the globe.

He nodded, color draining from his face. "After they declared martial law, the national guardsmen started to shoot any police officer that didn't do exactly what they said when they said it. I finally decided I had enough and I ran away during the middle of the night. What about you?"

"Marines" Claudia admitted. "I ran away from pretty much the same situation, only mine was in New York City. How did you get so far away and why?"

He shrugged and smiled. "I drove most of the way until I ran into a traffic jam I couldn't get around a few miles down the freeway, I ran out of gas and took off on foot. I'm headed to Washington D.C. I mean, the way that I figure it, if there's anyone left in charge of the country and still keeping things running, they will be at the capital, right?"

Claudia wasn't completely sure she agreed, but she nodded anyway.

"Want to come with me?" He asked, his voice sounding shy and hopeful.

"What the hell, I'm sure there's somebody there that would like to prosecute me for going AWOL." Claudia smiled. "I'm Claudia Donaldson."

"Mason Hale" the police officer said, smiling a little.

And that was how Claudia found herself heading east, in company, to the U.S. Capital.


	23. Chapter 23 July 1st

**I**

On the first day of July, Floyd Wilks was lazily sitting on the hood of his Cadillac eating saltines and drinking from a bottle of Orange Crush. The large double-doors of the hangar were open in front of him; he had spent the morning inside doing a full maintenance check on Derek's Cessna. He had packed the back seat and the storage compartment full of supplies: food, clothing, and a large flashlight - all of the things that he was going to need for his trip.

He had looked at his own Pitney stunt plane longingly for a while before he decided that it was going to be his son's plane that accompanied him. It seemed right; it almost seemed _perfect. _In a way, Floyd felt that the lovingly maintained Cessna was part of his son's soul. Being inside it for his journey was almost like having his son alongside him in the passenger seat, as he had been so many times before.

Things were better now. After two days of wallowing in misery and hoping that he would get sick and die from the flu, he realized that this was not going to happen. And since it was apparent that he wasn't going to die, he decided that he might as well start figuring out how he was going to live. That realization came in a way he had not completely expected.

**II**

Floyd was very drunk. Sitting in the same recliner that he was in two weeks earlier when his son announced his pending nuptials, Floyd contemplated life and death with a bottle of scotch. His drunkenness had come straight from the neck of a bottle, no glass for him. Glasses were things of civilization and social drinking, glasses were for dinner parties and weddings. When a man got drunk just for the purpose of getting drunk, it was just between him and the bottle.

This was the very thing that was idling itself around the cloudy and tired mind of Floyd Wilks as he stared blearily at the last two inches of amber fluid in the bottle of Glenfiddich. He had picked up the bottle on his trip to the drug store earlier in the day to get his Cadillac and drive it home. The delirious man that Floyd had been sure was going to run him over had not moved. He was very dead, his arm dangling out of the window and encrusted with a shifting and crawling infestation of maggots. Floyd tried to ignore that revolting pendulum of flesh as he walked into the store to get some food (and booze), and then again as he came back outside to drive away in the Caddy.

Down the street from his house was an acquaintance lying dead in his front yard, not a friend, just someone that he had exchanged greetings with from time to time. He appeared to have been packing up his car to leave when he died. The roof rack was stacked high with suitcases and such, his kids' car seats were arrayed in the back seat and a stroller was shoved haphazardly into the open trunk with bags of groceries.

_Where was he going to run to? _Floyd wondered. _Where did he think he could go that would be far enough away to save himself and his family?_

The thought depressed him even more than he already was. He decided that the best thing for him now would be to go back home and get as drunk as humanly possible.

And so he did.

He had been slowly dosing himself with the scotch for over two hours when he had reached a point that he sufficiently did not care about anything. He hadn't drank heavily enough to affect his perception in at least five years, and he hadn't drank enough to truly be considered drunk in at least twice that long. He was so drunk, in fact, that he didn't react much one way or another when he looked over and saw his son sitting on the couch beside him, looking at him with grim concern.

"Hey boy." Floyd said, his words throaty and slurred.

_"Com'on dad." _Derek seemed to say, sounding a little disappointed_. "What are you doing?"_

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Floyd replied. "I'm getting drunk, and when I'm done with that, I'm thinking of getting drunk some more."

_"Is that helping you to feel better?" _He heard the voice again, sounding like it was coming from deep in his head.

"It's helping me to feel nuthin' at all." Floyd said.

_"And tomorrow, Amanda and I are still going to be dead. But on top of having that to deal with, you are going to have a monster hangover."_ Derek chided him_. "The alcohol isn't helping anything...and besides, that's not what you would have wanted me to do if I were in your place."_

"I don't want to be alive anymore." Floyd complained, his voice taking on a whining quality.

_"But you are, Dad."_ Derek said, reaching over and grabbing the bottle of scotch our of Floyd's hand before setting it down on the coffee table_. "God has kept you alive for a reason. You need to go find out why."_

Floyd shook his head. "I don't want to."

_"I know Dad."_ Derek replied sympathetically. _"But it's just something you have to do."_

"Why do I have to do it?" Floyd asked, tears rolling down his face.

_"You were a hero once Dad, remember?"_ Derek asked.

Floyd nodded, remembering back to Vietnam. He was starting to sober up now and came to the chilling realization that he was having a conversation with his dead son. Perhaps he was finally starting to go crazy. Maybe the whole flu incident and losing two people he loved finally was enough to send him over the edge for good.

_"You are going to be a hero again."_ Derek told him. _"When I died, there was nothing that you could have done to save me. But now, if you don't go and do what you are meant to do, then more people are going to die. And those ones you can prevent."_

Unsteadily, Floyd got up out of the chair and stumbled over to hug his son. Tears poured down his face through his closed eyes as he wrapped his arms around Derek. For a long moment, the two were silent before Derek spoke to him one more time.

_"Dad, you need to do what Mother Abigail told you, but you have to go south first. There's someone there waiting for you, someone that's going to help you."_ Derek told him, and Floyd could hear the voice growing quieter and more distant with each word.

"I love you, son." Derek choked out, sensing that their time had come to an end once more.

_"I love you too, Dad."_ Derek replied. _"Amanda and I both love you."_

And then he was gone. Floyd opened up his eyes to find his arms around nothing but empty air.

He fell to his knees and wept bitterly.

**III**

Whether the vision was real or not was no longer important to Floyd. Whether it was his son or just his own drunken imagination, he had a purpose and a goal once again. Who or whatever it was that delivered the information was irrelevant. It was that same purpose that made him decide that the correct vehicle on his trip with fate was his son's plane. He didn't know why exactly, maybe it was karma, but it felt like the _right_ thing to do.

His resolve was solid and now that the hangover seemed finally to be wearing off (due in no small part to a dose of the hair of the dog that bit him), he felt that he was ready to get his trip started. But he was a pilot first and foremost; as eager as he was to be on his way, he wasn't going to be unsafe in doing it.

Itching to get airborne, Floyd still meticulously inspected the plane, going over the entire preflight checklist. With one hand, he lifted the right aileron up, the control surface giving way with a little bit of pressure. Everything was perfect. There was nothing that went neglected, no joint that went unoiled, no worn part that went unreplaced. Tears welled up one more time as Floyd realized that the same excruciating touch for detail that he had with the exterior of his plane, his son had for the interior; the mechanics of his own plane.

Feeling that everything was ready; He opened the door and stepped into the plane. He closed his eyes for a moment, offering up a brief prayer of thanks to his son for all the hard work he did to maintain the Cessna. He knew that the time had come, that it was time to leave his old life behind, the moment he toggled the master power switches and listened to the high-pitched electronic whine of the instruments warming up.

"Clear prop..." He muttered under his breath, feeling no need to yell it out as that he was certain beyond doubt that there was nobody anywhere nearby to be in danger.

He turned the key and the whole plane shook momentarily as the magnetos caught and the propeller jumped to life. He put his headset on and glanced at the radio, checking the UNICOM frequency. The idea was laughable that he even bother with the radio, but the entire system of routine that Floyd has built his life around was ingrained on him by being a pilot. An aircraft pilot was routine personified.

Throttling up, the plan slowly emerged from the hangar like winged beast of pray emerging from its nest to take flight. He nudged his plane onto the short taxiway and approached the runway. He checked every gauge, ever switch and every indicator. He wasn't quite sure that he really wanted to live in the world that his had become, but he was absolutely not going to die in a plane, it was a matter of pride to him.

"Cessna November-three-seven-two-five-Charlie entering runway one-nine, takeoff to the South" Floyd announced into his headset, feeling foolish for even bothering.

Floyd turned his aircraft onto the black surface of the runway, for the first time more than a little bit unsure about what he was doing. That wasn't enough to stop him though. Resolute, he pushed forward on the throttle and let go of the brake. The small plane started to buzz down Kent State Airport's runway. It wasn't as nimble and fast or as his plane, but it felt like exactly where he should be.

Slowly, and almost reluctantly, first the front wheel and then the two rear wheels lifted off of the ground. Floyd pulled back on the yoke and the small plane gradually lifted up into the sky. For the first time since he flew, he felt a chilling sense of being absolutely alone. The skies were completely devoid of traffic. As far as Floyd knew, he was the only person in the country, or maybe even the world, who didn't have his feet on the ground.


	24. Chapter 24 July 3rd

**(AN: Sorry this took so long. This chapter has sent me for a loop. I've written and rewritten it about a half dozen times to get to a place where I'm 'mostly' happy with it. Next chapter will come faster. Thank you for reading!)**

"Sam?" Andy said, the panic in his voice had become evident.

She didn't respond to him, at least not in a way that he could tell. The girl thrashed around in her sleep, her sheets and hair soaked in sweat. Andy didn't understand how this could happen, when they had gone to bed the night before she had been fine. Or at least mostly fine.

The wound from the rusty nail had gotten infected. He had tried to pretend that it wasn't, but yesterday afternoon there was no way to deny it anymore. The area around the puncture had become red and swollen with red lines extending away from it. Andy would have given anything to have Internet access at that moment. He wracked his brain trying to think of some way he could figure out what to do to help her.

He put his hand on her forehead, she felt like the inside of her skull had become a furnace. The heat radiating out from her almost seemed to make the sweat evaporate as quickly as it could emerge onto her skin.

"Hang on Sam, I'll be right back." He said, more to himself than to her.

Andy ran upstairs to Sam's parents' bathroom. He opened up the medicine cabinet and rummaged through it, searching for anything that he could recognize as an antibiotic. Amoxicillin, Penicillin... he tried to think of the names of drugs that might help an infection. One after another he threw aside pill bottles, everything was either a name that he didn't recognize or it was something he did recognize and wouldn't be useful to help his sick...friend? _Girl_friend?

Andy wasn't really sure what they were to each other right now. It was almost frightening how quickly things had happened since that early morning on the beach. Before the day had ended, Andy had moved from the guestroom into Samantha's bedroom. In his mind it was total bliss, when they were together they seemed to be able to temporarily set aside the realities of the world and simply enter their own personal "where and when". That they had spent the last three days mating like rabbits in Sam's large canopied bed did not seem bad or wrong to Andy in any way. But he didn't know if it could really be called "making love".

Did he love her?

Andy wasn't sure that he knew the answer to that. They did need each other, and maybe that is a pretty good substitute for love when you really get down to it. But love or not, she was his friend and he was intent on going to the ends of the earth in that was what it took to keep her alive.

Irritated, Andy threw a bottle of Zoloft and a single-use blister pack of Cialis against the mirror. There was nothing here to save Samantha's life, but there was plenty here to give an anxious person with allergies an erection. _Just perfect_, Andy thought.

For the first time in a few days, Andy was starting to feel the fear taking hold of him. Fear doesn't always greet you directly, sometimes fear comes in through the back door and you don't know that it's there until it's already got its claws in you. And often, when fear has taken control, there's no way to win it back again. At this point, Andy was quite certain that fear had not only come in through the back door, it had gotten comfortable and helped itself to tea and cookies.

He had wasted enough time, It was time to move on to the alternate plan.

Andy closed the medicine cabinet and ran down the stairs. In the kitchen, he found the keys to the Ford Explorer in the driveway. Andy didn't know how to drive, but he was about to find himself getting a crash course. (He hoped it would involve as little actual crashing as possible.)

**II**

The Explorer skidded wildly. At one point it had almost completely lost control as Andy turned it onto the state highway heading in the direction of Kingston. The front end of the SUV looked tortured, having already experienced the unfortunate side effects of Andy's introduction to driving. The collateral damage he left in his wake included two trashcans and a mailbox. The latter had busted out one of the headlights and the mailbox's red aluminum flag still protruded from the cracked front grille.

Andy swerved around a stalled out car on his side of the road, he overcompensated a little bit and the Explorer kicked up a roostertail of sand and gravel on the opposite shoulder for a moment before he got pointed back in the correct position. Had anyone seen the driving, they would have assumed that he was drunk rather than inexperienced. The fear played it's part though, it was hard for him to concentrate on driving when he was looking in the back seat every fey seconds to check on Samantha.

Samantha seemed semi-conscious. Being transported from the house to the car had brought her back to reality. It was a very slight difference, and probably temporary, but for the time being Samantha had her eyes open and she was watching Andy wearily. She slumped forward against her seatbelt and her face was flushed but her eyes had regained some of their lost clarity. Andy definitely did not care for the ashen cast her face had taken on.

A group of carrion birds were gathered around a corpse lying in the middle of the road beside a car, but Andy didn't even register this. He paid neither the body nor the scattering birds any mind as he drove past them at nearly seventy miles an hour. The trees whipped past him on both sides of the road, the kudzu covered hillsides were nothing more than a solid blur of green. Fortunately though, the road wasn't traveled much even under the best of situations. It appeared that, with the exception of the car that he passed, there was no one else that had decided to die with his or her car stalled in the middle of the road.

Years upon years of travelling this road were imprinted on Andy's mind. He knew every irregularity in the scenery, he knew every dirt road or turnout on the fifteen-mile trip into Kingston. His mind frantically watched for them, he knew them as waypoints on his trip to town. One quarter of the way there, halfway there, three-quarters of the way there. His mind ticked each one off in barely controlled panic. He could hear Sam mumbling something in the back seat, but he couldn't turn around to find out what it was. Eyes widening, he slammed on the brakes so hard that the Explorer slipped sideways, leaving four black streaks of rubber across the pavement. For a moment, he was almost sure that the vehicle was going to overturn (and it very nearly did), before it came to a complete stop.

Ahead of them was the bridge which lead over the Kingston River. Normally, the water was a comfortable ten feet or so beneath the surface of the bridge. But now, the water was at least two feet above the surface and rushing by fairly quickly. Andy knew that the power plant was a short way up the river, he figured that most likely the dam had ruptured and swelled the waterway. Dread started to fill him as he realized that this was the only road into town and he would have to figure out some other way to get Sam some help. Unless...

Andy opened the door of the Explorer and gauged the distance between the floor and the road. He thought that it just might be possible for him to cross the bridge. The water looked a couple feet deep, though he knew that the deepest part would be right in the middle where the bridge dipped down a little bit. He also knew that if an engine was under water, it would stop working and they would be stranded in the middle of the river. What he didn't know was _how much_ of the engine could be underwater before it stopped working or _how long_ before it ceased.

Deciding that it was worth the risk, Andy turned the SUV back toward the bridge and started slowly rolling it forward. The whole vehicle lurched a little bit, as the moving water quickly submerged half of the leading tires. But overall, it wasn't a problem. He continued to roll forward, the water getting deeper and deeper. Rolling down the window to get a better idea of how deep the water really was made Andy shiver. It was obvious that the water was deep and getting deeper, maybe a little deeper than he had originally thought.

The engine still sounded strong though, even though the bottom of his left foot was starting to get wet as water made its way into the cab. The water in front of him was lapping at the top of the hood, making small little whirlpools everywhere it pushed against the left side of the Explorer, but they kept moving. It wasn't until Andy was more than halfway across the bridge when he felt the engine starting to sputter. Quickly, he pushed his foot down on the gas pedal and felt the mechanical beast lurch forward, pushing the two of them up and out of the water and onto the dry ground on the other side.

Giving a sigh of relief, Andy opened up the door for a moment, letting all of the accumulated water pour out onto the ground. The SUV was fine, and aside from now having wet floorboards, seemed to be no worse for the wear. Andy gunned the engine again; heading for the town that was now only a short distance further.

The road leading up to Kingston was deceptively peaceful, and bore very little resemblance to the town itself. Kingston looked like it had been set upon by the Mardi Gras from hell. Corpses littered the gutters amidst the burning wrecks of multitudes of vehicles strewn about the city streets, a few of them still smoldering. In one place a trio of decaying corpses hung from lynchropes tied to streetlights. They swung back and forth lazily, one of them with an almost comical grin on its face. _"Hey kid, whatcha in such a hurry for? Don't you know we got all the time in the world?"_

Andy drove on. He wondered what the crimes of those three men were, or even if there were crimes at all. It appeared that when things get crazy enough, everyone is always looking for someone to blame. People tend to go back to their superstitious roots and when that happens, the hangman's noose is never that far behind. Andy didn't like to think of himself as a pessimist...but mankind sucked.

Dodging in and out of cars, He finally found what he was looking for. He brought the car up and over the curb next to the Kingston Pharmacy. He didn't even stop the engine as he got out and ran inside the building.

The glass was already broken and it appeared that the only place that was truly ransacked was the alcoholic beverage section. That wasn't even close to what Andy was looking for, however. What he made a beeline for was the pharmacy itself. He jumped over the counter and started running down the aisles looking for some kind of antibiotic. His heart sank as he realized that the stocking system was not alphabetical, but some way of classifying the drugs that he could not decipher.

An idea struck him like a freight train.

He ran back to the front counter. With all the people that had been sick in the previous week, surely doctors had filled a lot of prescriptions for antibiotics. Doctors who determined that the problem was nothing more than a respiratory infection or something would tell their patients to just go home, get some bed rest and fluids, and be sure to take all their antibiotics..._all of their antibiotics._

At the counter were dozens of little plastic baskets, each one of them filled with pill bottles of some sort. Andy grabbed a handful of them, reading the labels off of each bottle until he could find one that he recognized. Finally recognition struck - The bottle in his hands was labeled "CIPRO". The name struck a chord; it was an antibiotic, a powerful one. He was pretty sure that he had heard on the news that it was used to fight Anthrax. If it could beat the hell out of Anthrax, Andy reasoned, it could definitely fight off whatever it was that Samantha had.

Barely missing a step, he grabbed a bottle of water as he ran by the long since warmed cold case by the cash registers. He knew that people sometimes had very bad reactions to antibiotics, he knew that those people sometimes died. There was a chance that what he was about to do could kill Samantha, but doing nothing would almost certainly kill her as well, so what choice did he really have?

While he was inside, she had laid down across the bench seat in the back of the Explorer. She was still sweating profusely and shivering when he kneeled down beside her. She made no comment as he put two of the pills in her mouth and followed it with an extra large gulp from the bottle of water. Although she choked a little, spitting some of the water out onto him, she did manage to get the pills down her throat.

She mumbled something that he couldn't understand. It might have been a note of thanks, but with the delirious fire that was in her eyes as she opened them for a moment to look at Andy, he really couldn't tell.

Alex kissed her on the forehead as he moved around to the seat behind hers. Now it was time to wait. To wait and hope that everything worked itself out in the morning.


	25. Chapter 25 July 4th

Morning did very little to improve the view of the capital of the United States. In fact, while it wasn't as eerie as it had been the night before, but the landscape of destruction made it seem all the more apocalyptic in the daylight. Birds chirped in the few trees that were standing, but they did very little to drive out the quiet desolation.

It was a warm Independence Day morning when Claudia Donaldson and Mason Hale found themselves sitting on the steps of the Library of Congress. They looked in the direction of the National Mall with a mixture of despair and unease. Although they had arrived in the city after dark, it wasn't too dark to keep them from seeing that Washington D.C's last days had been very bad ones.

"Who would do something like this?" Mason asked, staring at the wreckage before them.

Claudia just shook her head.

It appeared that the blast was centered on the White House, with destruction extending outward to all four points of the compass. The dwelling place of the President himself was completely erased from existence, presumably with everything and everyone that happened to be inside it at the time. The damage extended out for more than a mile. In the middle was nothing but a charred emptiness. Away from the center point more and more buildings were standing, but many were nothing more than twisted husks of blackened concrete and metal.

The Washington Monument didn't survive; its entire structure was fractured into pieces and thrown so far that it was almost in the middle of Independence Avenue, lying on its side. The National Air and Space museum looked like it had been mostly spared, but the rest of the museums on the National Mall were either gone or pretty close to it. Everywhere trees were throw to the ground, pointing away from the blast site; most of them had been flash-burned into charcoal.

The library itself was mostly spared. It appeared that the Capitol Building had sustained the brunt of the shockwave. All of the windows at the Library of Congress had shattered but aside from the rubble strewn across its steps, the damage had been minimal. _Well, not entirely minimal. _Claudia thought, noting the blackened shadow that used to be a person (or corpse) that was on the step whenever the detonation had occurred.

Mason jumped to his feet suddenly, looking down at Claudia with his eyes wide.

"Maybe we should get out of here," he said, mouth agape. "This might have been a nuclear bomb...maybe..."

"It wasn't." Claudia said, cutting him off. "It was a thermobaric bomb."

"A what?" Mason asked, looking back at the heart of the blast site.

"Thermobaric bomb, a fuel-air explosive." Claudia said. "In a conventional explosive, the air around the bomb is used to ignite the weapon. In a fuel-air explosive, the air around the bomb _becomes_ the weapon. It creates a cloud of heat and pressure that extends away from the blast, destroying everything it comes across."

"So somebody got mad at the government?" Mason suggested.

"No." Claudia said, shaking her head. "A fuel-air bomb isn't something that some closet anarchist, sick with the flu, is going to cook up in their basement before they die. I'd bet that what happened here was some kind of military coup. It looks like the government kept playing its stupid, petty little games right up until the end. As though they all meant anything."

Mason sat back down on the step, hoping that they would get out of this graveyard before sunset. It had been his idea to come here, but now he only wanted to be somewhere else.

"So, where to now?" He asked.

"_I'm_ going south to look in on my family, you're welcome to come with me or go do your own thing. It doesn't matter to me." Claudia replied.

Mason looked at her quizzically.

"I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?" he asked her.

"No" Claudia said, not elaborating.

"Then what the hell is the matter?" Mason said, irritated. "You have been pissy ever since we got here. I thought you had wanted to check the city just as much as I did. It's not like you were coming up with any better ideas. So what if our dumbassed president and his yes-men blew themselves up, it's not like they were good at doing..."

"That's the point!" Claudia said, standing up and leaning over Mason in a way that made him scramble backwards in surprise.

"Don't you see, that's the fucking point!" She yelled, glowering. "I gave part of my life to serve a government that destroys everything that it touches. First its laws, then its people and finally itself."

"You don't really think..."Mason started.

"Don't you?" Claudia demanded, cutting him off again. "I was there Mason, I was part of this thing. They had me stationed in front of a tunnel to shoot anyone that came through it. And it was all just a make-work assignment, they didn't care if anyone got off of Manhattan Island. All they cared about was making sure that by the time people started to ask serious questions, it wouldn't matter anymore. The U.S. government ended its reign doing what it does best; covering up. First they screwed up and let this _thing _loose, and then they kept up the big lie until it was too late to even need to pretend anymore.

"Mason. Everything that I grew up believing, all of the crap about honor and loyalty and shit that I heard from my dad and my family has all turned out to be garbage. I threw away four years working for a government that is nothing more than layers of secrets built upon layers of secrets. Eventually the piles of secrets get so thick that not even the career politicians laying the fresh coat know what is really being done at the bottom of the heap. In the end, something terrible is allowed to occur and instead of working to stop it, the "powers that be" simply toss one final layer of secrets on top of the pile and call it a day."

Stunned, Mason said nothing. He folded his hands in front of him and stared at the ground in silence.

More composed, Claudia smiled weakly.

"I grew up thinking 'I'm glad to be an American, we are the good guys. We are the ones that are going to stand up and do what's right no matter what happens.' But in the end, all of that just turned out to be bullshit. I don't know how I am supposed to ever get over that, Mason. I didn't turn out to be the good guy, all I became was the tool of the bad guy – shooting innocent people trying to escape from a dead city." She said.

Neither of them spoke for a long while, they simply sat on the steps, lost in their own thoughts. It was finally Mason who opened his mouth.

"So where do we go from here?" He asked.

"I don't know." She said, sounding exasperated. "I figure that we can find our way back to the beltway and follow the side streets to a state highway or something that will take us south toward Florida."

"No." Mason said, shaking his head. "I meant, where do we go from here as people? If we can't trust in others to do what's right, what is that supposed to say about us?"

Claudia looked up at Mason for a moment, her eyes damp. After an almost endless moment she shook her head.

"I don't know." She admitted.

The sounds of rocks scraping against each other made the two spin around toward the library, their guns drawn and in their hands almost as if by magic. They found themselves staring at a wide-eyed boy with black skin; so scared that his bladder let loose, turning the stonewashed denim pants a dark blue around the crotch.

"I don't have anything!" he shouted, holding his hands up above his head. "Don't shoot me!"

First Claudia and then Mason holstered up and walked toward the boy.

"Shit, kid" Claudia said. "We were just a little jumpy, I didn't mean to scare you."

The "kid" was really not all that much younger than Mason was, four or five years at the outside. But standing there with the faint whiff of urine travelling downwind and his eyes wide in terror, he looked much younger.

"No, really kid, be cool." Claudia said, attempting to smile disarmingly. "We aren't going to shoot you, you just startled us."

She extended a gloved hand toward the boy. "I'm Claudia, and this is Mason."

The boy looked at the hand for a moment then reached out to shake it.

"I'm Neil Dawes."

**II**

"I never really did find out for sure if my family was inside the hospital." Neil said, staring at the campfire. "I just sat there in front of the place for an entire day, too scared to go in and too scared to leave. It wasn't until some crazy guy, sick with the flu, started shooting at me that I ran away. I started walking after that and just found my way here.

"Tough fucking luck kid." Mason said. "I'm really sorry to hear about that."

The three of them had piled into the Landrover, and after finding Neil a change of clothes, started working their way south. It was very slow going and they found themselves pulling so many stalled cars out of their path that Claudia seriously questioned whether or not they should ditch the Landrover and pick up a new one once they had gotten out into the suburbs. Past the beltway things started to get easier, and they had crept more than thirty miles south by the time sunset was descending on them.

Once they had made a camp for the night and set about making a dinner out of Pepsi and Dinty Moore beef stew, Neil started telling his story. He left out the part about stabbing his friend, and anything about getting in trouble with the law for that matter, and said that the reason he had been away from home had been simply because he had run away. He didn't elaborate and his new friends didn't ask him to.

For two days Neil stayed in the house, waiting for his parents to come back before he finally decided that he would go down to the hospital and see if he could find them. He had seen enough while he was out, and learned enough from the television to know the truth, but he wasn't able to accept it yet by that point. The irrational side of him was still comforting him with thoughts that his parents and sisters just left to get away from the problems that he had most assuredly caused. That was all, nothing more, they were quite alive and well, bet your bottom dollar.

The longer that he kept telling himself reassuring lies, the more they started to taste stale and false to him. By the morning of the 29th, he couldn't convince himself any longer that his parents were okay. He had decided that it was time for him to go to the hospital and find out for himself. Getting outside, it had seemed as though civilization as Neil knew it had regressed exponentially since he had last been outdoors two days earlier. Sporadic fires burned out of control, and there were no law enforcement or firemen to be seen anywhere. There were no sirens, just the sound of the occasional gunshot. It gave him the impression that the world was winding down in some catastrophic way.

It took him all morning to work his way over to the Oak Valley Community Medical Center. Neil wasn't afraid to admit it, he was scared. There weren't many people out and about, but the ones that were looked decidedly unhealthy. Except for one, anyway. One young woman walked up the street and appeared to be in perfect health. She had a gun in her hand so Neil decided that discretion was the better part of valor and gave her a wide berth.

Any courage he had, he definitely expended in the act of getting there. Once Neil had made it to the hospital he suddenly felt any resolve he had abandon him. Some wit had spraypainted the words "no vacancy" in bright red paint over the hospital's emergency room sign. An ambulance was parked haphazardly, with one tire up on the curb and the back doors hanging open. The paramedic himself was lying on the ground, face up, his entire face appeared to be a large moving mass. Neil figured it was maggots crawling over his flesh but he had absolutely no desire to get any closer and find out for sure.

There was a bench across from the emergency room around which was littered with cigarette butts, it was apparently the place that the hospital staff came to do their dirty little deed that they busily told other people not to. _"Do as I do, not as I say, don'cha know?" _Neil sat down there and patiently waited, it was an emergency room wasn't it? Sooner or later some doctor or nurse would come out through the emergency room doors and he would ask them if any of his family was inside. He was certain that the ever-helpful doctor or nurse would smile at him and go inside and get him the information he so desired. Then they would come out and happily tell him that his entire family was inside and waiting for him.

It was all bullshit. Secretly, Neil knew that it was bullshit. His family was dead; all of them and so was everyone else in this tomb that used to be a hospital. That was why he wouldn't go in and see for himself, that was why he wouldn't even go to the parking deck looking for his family's car. It seemed to him that just maybe after all, he preferred the ambiguity of not knowing for certain. It seemed that after all, maybe he was just better off not knowing that his mother, father and sisters were huddled together somewhere upstairs; their own bodies acting as hosts to the same masses of maggots keeping yonder paramedic company.

The image was a little too much for Neil; he hunched over and retched a few times, choking up a mouthful of yellow bile, which he spit on the concrete amongst the remnants of ancient chewing gum and cigarette butts. He didn't want to be there anymore, he wanted to get away as fast as he could but something prevented it. (Duty?) He couldn't quite bring himself to abandon his family.

He sat there for close to fourteen hours until the crazy old guy emerged from the hospital and took the choice out of his hands. He had a terrifyingly large pistol in his hand, the kind that Clint Eastwood always carried in those old spaghetti westerns. The man stumbled back and forth, a big red bandanna on his bald head making him look like a refugee who found his way out of a biker gang twenty years or so earlier. But what scared Neil more was the look of pure hatred and delirium in the man's eyes.

Neil stood up from the bench as the man approached. He found the gun pointed at his face from about ten yards away.

"There you are" the man said, his words slurred. "Finally caught up with you, sonofabitch. You had this coming to you back in Kansas City."

The man fired the weapon; its report was almost deafening. Neil had closed his eyes tightly, waiting to die, but he opened them a few seconds later when he realized that he wasn't hurt. The man was still standing in front of him, his mouth open and breathing heavily, apparently waiting patiently for Neil to fall over dead. Rather than wait for him to get a second shot, Neil turned and bolted in the opposite direction, hearing the gunfire over and over behind him. One of the shot had come so close that he felt it pass by his leg.

Five shots fired and then he could hear the hammer clicking over and over. The owner of the weapons began screaming incoherently, saying something Neil stealing all of his money and he was going to get even. Neil was sure that he didn't want to argue the point.

In fact, he didn't stop until he was almost a mile away from the hospital. He examined his leg and found that there were two holes in his baggy jeans, not more than a third of an inch wide, one where the bullet entered and the other where it left.

"Holy shit." Neil exclaimed, breathing hard. He had been maybe an inch away from being shot in the back of the knee.

Neil didn't know if the guy was still out there, but he decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to start moving in the other direction, just in case he had enough ammo to reload.

"Kid." Mason said. "You okay?"

Neil's eyes snapped up to the cop's and he nodded.

"Yeah, sorry." he said. "I just zoned out for a minute."

Claudia smiled at him a little.

"I asked you how you got here." She said.

"Oh." Neil said. "I don't really know. I just started walking. I didn't really have any intention of coming here, it was just where I ended up. And when I got here I figured that as long as I've lived by Washington D.C., I had never seen it. I figured I should before I started heading in the direction that my crazy dreams have been telling me to go."

Claudia and Mason both looked at each other nervously then back to Neil.

"Tell us about your dreams." Claudia asked.


	26. Chapter 26 July 6th

A few miles outside of Del Rio, Texas, a lone man sat and watched the sun dip to the horizon. His house sat at the very edge of the desert, looking out upon the open sea of blight and hardpan, dotted with the occasional scrub brush. The desert seemed to go on forever and the sun dipping down to meet it made its surface gleam as though it was an ocean instead of dirt. It was an optical illusion, the man knew, a mirage. The mirage had long since enticed foolish men to their deaths, promising water to the thirsty and hope to the hopeless. Wherever the summer heat hit the desert, it sprang up, a shimmering and undulating phantasm that could guide the unwary to their doom.

This man, sitting on his front porch with his booted feet up on the wooden railing, had seen many men go to their deaths in such a way. He had lived there in that house for more than forty years, watching the seasons tick by as paint peeled off of wood and the wood underneath first lightened and then darkened to a listless gray color that made it blend in hopelessly with the desert itself. He was a man that was born a hundred years too late, he was the last of the breed of true men of nature, he was the last remnant of an easier and simpler day.

Although he shunned technology, he was not a stranger to it. He had an expensive Bose stereo that sat on the cheap Formica countertops of his kitchen. He would listen to it in the evening hours, after the sun had dropped below the horizon and he had gone inside to cook his evening meal. The state of the world concerned him, and he would find himself staying up later and later every night; listening to world's very fabric disintegrate across the airwaves. Night after night the frown on his face became deeper and more ingrained as he stared out the window and smoked his hand-rolled cigarettes, the only company he had was the moon staring down on him from overhead.

His last trip into town had troubled him greatly; nearly everyone that he ran into was sick with the flu. Even so, most had the good sense to stay out of his way. Although his real name was Thomas Red Deer, the people on the outskirts of El Paso called him "Viejo Magio Loco", or "Old Crazy Magic". He did nothing to discourage the label, and in a way he felt that it suited him. But on that day, not even the image of "Viejo Loco" was enough to draw them out of their problems. A few of them gave him nods or a quick word of greeting as they passed by.

He stocked up on food and drinking water like the others in town were stocking up on cold medicine and antibiotics. Though it was usually a matter of public interest when the old Apache Indian came into town, this time nobody seemed to notice it at all. He got into his old and beat up Ford truck and went back to his house that night, troubled and curious at the same time. He wondered what the spirits had in store for the world. He wondered what the spirits had in store for him.

His closest neighbor was the Cavendish family that was almost a mile down the dirt road, they were ranchers on a much larger scale than he was, but they were friendly and cordial to one another. The Cavendishes were seemingly immune to all of the stories and superstitious rumors of "Viejo Loco". They would come to him when things happened that they could not explain, when all of their modern medical techniques could not help to deliver a particularly difficult foal. It was then that Thomas would come to them and show that that sometimes the old ways really were the best ways.

He had caught several of their horses that had escaped a corral almost a week ago. When he went to return them he found that half of the family was dead. David and Michelle, the elder Cavendishes, had already passed on the night before, as had two of their children. The three youngest children: Nora, Sarah and Robert all lingered on for a couple days more. Thomas stayed with them until their spirits had parted their bodies and followed after their parents. He buried the entire family as was their way, but the prayers and blessings he spoke were those of his people, for he knew no others.

Thomas was probably not as old as many mistook him for. His faced had an ageless quality to it, it was lined and chiseled as though from stone. The overall effect was that of a man that looked like he could be sixty years old just as easily as he could be half of that. His hair, trapped into an orderly braid of ebony that trailed down to the middle of his back gave away no clues either.

The truth was that Thomas Red Deer was fifty-nine years old. He had been born on the Yavapai reservation in the Arizona badlands during the times of forced assimilation. He had been forced to wear white clothes and speak the white language in the white schools. Taking an interest in his own culture was frowned upon, and at times he had been beaten for speaking his own language. His parents had wanted a life where they could live how they wanted to live, so they had settled in Texas, in this very house.

Thomas had seen the world of the white man and he knew that it was a world of poison, a world of false promises delivered with a deceiving smile. Viejo Loco wanted none of that world; he only wanted a place of solitude where he could be at one with both himself and the world around him. He had found it in an old cabin in the desert, owned by his father. For more than twenty years, since his wife died, he had lived there alone. The solitude did not bother him in the slightest.

Thomas squinted his eyes as he watched the last crescent of the falling sun dip below the horizon and plunge the Texas desert into twilight. All around him the desert started to come to life, sensing that the day was at an end. Off to his left he could see the screech owl that lived inside his barn poke its head out, preparing to take off a night of hunting. The crickets sensed the sunset as well, their soothing song started all over the desert floor as soon as the last golden rays had disappeared.

Thomas smiled, he had a romantic nature and the simple ways of the desert suited him. He had considered pulling the wide brimmed hat on his head down to cover his eyes and nap for a little while, but he was hungry and wanted to get some supper. His bones creaked under him, as he stood up and grabbed the barrel of the scattergun leaning against the weathered wooden railing. If asked a month ago, he would have said without a doubt that it was for rattlesnakes, but a darker and more sinister feeling had descended on him of late and it just seemed to him a good idea to carry the shotgun, even while walking around the house.

Inside, he flipped the light switch, bringing the single bare incandescent light bulb to life, illuminating the kitchen. He looked out through the window that he had spent so many troubled nights of late at. The only unnatural light that he was used to, the pale glare of the Cavendishes low-pressure mercury floodlight had long since been extinguished. The power plant was shut down, Thomas figured, but that wasn't something he would have to trouble himself with. The trappings of society were something that he had long since distrusted. He had turned down all attempts to be put on the local power grid. Instead, he had a windmill constructed that turned a generator. The generator emptied into batteries that provided far more electricity than Thomas' meager needs ever required.

Out of the icebox, Thomas retrieved a pair of center-cut pork chops and some eggs. He set them on the counter as he turned his propane stove to high, heating up his old iron skillet to a searing temperature. There were also a couple long-necks in the refrigerator, he was rather looking forward to those. Beer went great with pork, especially in the summer heat of the desert.

Standing in front of the window as he waited, rolling himself a cigarette and lighting it with the disposable lighter in his breast pocket. The light in the kitchen cast a ghostly reflection of him against the window as he watched for signs of life, for signs of anything on the horizon; but there was nothing.

The dreams he had been having were troubling him, troubling him far more than this plague which had wiped out everything around him and yet had left him alive. He believed in visions, and did not doubt that the dreams were just that. He knew that there was a woman of great medicine in the north, and that he was going to have to leave his house very soon to find her. He knew that evil was stirring in the west, the spirit that the Apache called the Owl-man had resurrected and his evil had been let loose on mankind once again. Thomas was not the Child of Water, and he had no interest in being such. Nevertheless, he felt that he might very well have to stand against the Owl-man.

Viejo Loco was not scared, but he was concerned. It would be time for him to go very soon and he wasn't sure that he would be ready for this. He had never been a warrior, had he been born in the old times he might have been called a medicine man, but never a warrior. Perhaps that was soon to change.

The pork sizzled as it hit the surface of the cast iron, filling the kitchen with a pleasing smell. Thomas let his dinner cook as he walked into his bedroom. The cooking sounds from the kitchen muffled, all thoughts of dinner left him as he reached underneath his bed and pulled out an ancient-looking mahogany box. He lifted it onto his rickety twin bed and opened it. The contents gleamed in the rising moonlight; the polished surface of the pair of Colt Single Action Army revolvers reflected the silver light. They had been his father's guns, and had belong to his father before him on and on back to when they had been given to a member of his family for service rendered right after the Civil War, more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

Although he had never shot at a human being before, he had become a deft hand with those shooting irons over the years. When he looked at the ancient weapons, all the fears he had for the future seemed to slip away.

_I have one last good adventure in me, _Thomas thought.


	27. Chapter 27 July 7th

**I**

Samantha Mackenzie looked at the five playing cards in her hand with puzzled expression, twice reaching up to scratch her nose before she looked up at Andy. She was very pale and had the look about her of someone who had been seriously ill, but she was definitely feeling better. The red lines on her arm had receded and for the first time in four days, she was eating again.

"Okay" she said. "When I have a three-of-a-kind and a two-of-a-kind both at the same time, I should use the three-of-a-kind, right?"

Andy's face slackened as he sighed deeply.

"Fold." he said, tossing his cards onto the table.

Samantha grinned at him. She tossed the five cards, which contained nothing more than a pair of fours, onto the table.

"See?" She said triumphantly. "You aren't as good as you think. I just bluffed you so bad."

Andy smiled at her from across the table. The recreational vehicle that they had been staying in for the last few days was expensive. In the pre- Captain Trips world, it probably would have cost almost twice what Andy's mom had paid for her house. But here in this world, it was nothing more than a tool that they were going to use and then discard when the pair were prepared to move on.

The day they drove into Kingston, Andy waited until he was sure that Samantha was asleep and then drove the Explorer to the RV dealership on the other end of town. By his reckoning, if they were going to get one of those big hulking monstrosities, they might as well get the biggest of the big hulking monstrosities. So after transporting Sam into the bedroom of the thirty-eight foot Fleetwood, Andy drove it back to the front of the drug store where he was determined to wait until Sam either recovered...or she didn't.

Andy had opened the slide-outs from the RV and then spent the next three days caring for Sam. Other than his trips into the store to get food and medicine, he never left her side the entire time. Two nights ago had been the worst; her fever had spiked to the point that Andy was seriously afraid that she was going to burn herself out. He didn't sleep a wink that night. All he could bring himself to do was to watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest, every exhalation had him watching intently, praying that she would take in another breath. A dozen times a minute for more than five hours this went on until somewhere around dawn her fever broke and her breathing became strong and regular. Whatever war had been fought inside her body was over, her immune system had routed the infection.

Sick or not, Sam would thrash around, muttering unspoken horrors in her sleep. Andy knew what it was and he was powerless to do anything about it. Andy knew what it was because the Darkman haunted his dreams too. As soon as Sam was better, they would have to move on. If they didn't, Andy surmised, they were apt to go insane from the endless torment in the dark pools of their dreams. The dreams would be over when the got to Nebraska. He was sure of this even though he couldn't exactly say why he was sure.

And, since no time was like the present...

"Sam" Andy said. "Not to change the subject or anything, but what do you think about us starting west. Not today or tomorrow or anything, but soon."

"The dreams are getting worse for you too?" She asked.

Andy nodded. "For me he's always in a pool of water, dragging me down into it. I don't think I've gotten a whole eight hours of sleep since..."

Andy thought about it for a moment and shrugged. He was thinking _"since my mom died", _but he didn't want to say it. There was no use in bringing up the troubling weeks of the past. Better to think about the future.

"A long time?" Sam suggested.

"Yeah", he agreed. "A long time."

"It's okay with me." Sam said, shrugging. "Another day or so and I will be good as new, then we can go get some bikes or something and start on our way. What do you think?"

Andy nodded and smiled.

They had a plan, Andy thought. And they were a pretty good team when you got down to it. Andy still shuddered to think of what would have happened if she had died of that infection. Part of him; down deep where he didn't want to think, much less talk about, had created a doomsday scenario when he didn't know if Sam would live or die. He had decided that the easiest thing would be to walk back into the drug store and grab a bottle of pills, probably the most powerful painkillers he could identify, and then take the whole bottle. He would lie down next to Samantha and the two of them could go to the afterlife together, like some kind of fucked up Romeo and Juliet.

Andy wished he could squash that thought, make believe that it had never happened. Yet it had happened. Although Andy wasn't good at determining whether or not he loved the girl sitting across from him, he had lost too much to lose anything else. Given the choice between dead or alone, he didn't see it as much of a choice at all; he would pick dead.

Andy had no intention of voicing any of this to Samantha. Instead he gathered up the deck of cards and started to deftly shuffle them again. He had the first card in his hand to pass facedown to Sam when the both heard three sharp knocks on the door.

Wide-eyed, they both turned to the door then back to each other. Sam bolted up and started to walk toward the door only to have Andy grab her upper arm.

"Wait Sam" he said.

The generator had been running. That's how whoever it was outside had known, Andy thought. The RV had two enormous diesel fuel tanks and they had been full when he first appropriated the vehicle from the dealership. They didn't use the batteries much; the weather was cool enough that they didn't really need the air conditioning. So the only time they fired up the generator was when they were recharging the batteries two or three times a day. He also knew that there was no fooling anyone who was outside, every minor movement they made echoed through the RV to the point that outside it must sound like a couple of squirrels in a bass drum.

The door opened slowly and Andy mentally cursed himself for not locking it. He hadn't seen any need to, the dead of Kingston didn't seem to be too enthusiastic to get inside the little apartment that they had made for themselves. But apparently there was one person in town that wasn't dead, after all.

But it wasn't a face of anger or maliciousness that appeared in the doorway. Quite the opposite, it was an old man that had climbed up the two steps into the RV. Well, maybe not an old man, but definitely one that was getting up there in years. His face had a slightly sunburned and weathered look to it, like someone who had been travelling out in the open for a while.

"Hey folks." he said. "I'm sorry if I startled you, I just heard your gennie running and thought I'd see if anyone was alive in here."

Andy and Sam just looked at him, speechless.

"You kids okay?" the man finally asked, he had a red bandanna around his neck which he used to dry his sweat-covered brow.

"Ye...Yeah." Samantha stuttered, the first one to finally recover from the shock. "We just...haven't seen anyone else for..."

The girl furrowed her brow for a moment. "I don't even know what day this is. We must be into July, right?"

"July seventh." the man told them pleasantly. "It's been about three weeks since the whole mess started."

Comically, the old man then slapped his hand to his forehead.

"I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself." he said, "I'm Floyd Wilks."

"I'm Andy Verner." Andy said, speaking up. "And this is Sam."

Andy offered his hand, which Floyd shook readily, smiling.

"I had stopped here to have some lunch and to pick up my blood pressure medicine. I'm filling my own prescription, you might say." Floyd said. "You two want to have some lunch with me?"

**II**

"After I left Kent, I just cruised around New England for a few days before I started making my way down the coast" Floyd said, around a mouthful of food.

"Mostly" he continued. "I wanted to see if things were as bad as I really suspected that they were. I didn't really believe it, but I hoped that just maybe I would find that if I flew to Maine, or Vermont or somewhere I would find a place that was functioning normally - a place that the Superflu miraculously didn't touch."

The two teenagers sat on the other end of the table, enrapt in Floyd's story. The remnants of their lunch were gathered around them, Fritos bags and soda cans. They politely declined the dubious offerings of Vienna sausages and tinned sardines that Floyd had brought himself out of the store to lunch upon.

"You didn't find anyone?" Andy asked.

"Oh, I found quite a few." Floyd said. "At least from a distance.

"I'm not sure how many really died of the flu, I'd say well over ninety-nine percent. I could be wrong about that but just judging from how few people seem to be left, I'd be willing to bet that I'm pretty accurate. Even from the sky I don't think that I've seen more than forty people in the last six days, and that was flying over nine or ten different states.

"I flew over New York City but got out of there pretty quickly because a couple people were shooting at me. There was a camp full of people somewhere along the freeway in Pennsylvania. They waved to me, but there was nowhere safe for me to land my plane within miles of there so I continued on. I also ran into a man with a shell-shocked little boy while I was refueling in Lexington yesterday. I offered to take them with me, but the boy was scared of the plane and wouldn't get on. They thanked me anyway and said they would find their way to Las Vegas themselves. Which is all and well because I'm not going to Las Vegas, I'm heading to Nebraska."

Andy and Sam both flinched as though they had been bitten.

"Why Nebraska?" Sam asked.

Floyd appeared to mull over the question for a few moments, biting his lower lip and looking down at the table.

"Well" he started. "This is going to sound strange, maybe more than strange."

"Dreams..." Andy said absently.

Floyd lifted an eyebrow and nodded. "I'm glad to see that I'm not going crazy. So is that where the two of you intend to go, or are you off to some completely different place and this is all some type of cosmic 'shuffling of the deck.'"

"Yeah" Andy said as Sam nodded. "We were pretty much ready to go to Nebraska a week ago, but Samantha hurt her arm and it got infected. Now that she's doing better, we had been planning to get moving again."

"Could I interest you in a lift?" Floyd asked.

"A lift?" Sam asked, confused.

"Yeah" Floyd said. "I've got my plane. The three of us could be in Nebraska in two days. I want to take a rest tomorrow because I've been going non-stop for a week. But the day after tomorrow we can get going again and we could be in Hemingford Home in time for supper on the tenth. What do you say?"

Andy looked to Sam who only shrugged and smiled.

"Are you sure it won't be a bother?" Andy asked.

"Kid, I'm not really all that big on being by myself and I've just about been driven out of my mind the last few days with boredom." Floyd confided. "I am one-hundred-percent serious when I tell you that I wouldn't be doing any more of a favor to you than you would be doing for me."

"Awesome" Andy said.

Floyd took that to be a yes.

"Great. It's going to be nice to have a little company for a change."

**III**

Floyd sat on the steps of the RV, listening to the sound of the Southern night. Nighttime in the South had a distinctly different sound from night in the North. The air here seemed to be teeming with the sounds and presence of life. Bugs flew around him in swarms and all around him were clouds of fireflies brightening the night with their peculiar signal. He could hear frogs croaking and the crickets chirping off closer to the window. It was much different from the relative silence of the north. It all didn't bother him though; it was a comforting piece of evidence that maybe the world wasn't quite dead yet, that maybe the world had not yet moved on.

The only unnatural light came from the glowing cherry of the Marlboro cigarette that was between his fingers. It was a habit that had been abandoned many years in the past and re-adopted only a few days earlier. At this point in his life, lung cancer no longer really scared Floyd and he rather relished the sense of calm that nicotine provided him. In fact, it occurred to him that this was precisely the reason he had started smoking in Vietnam to begin with.

He was happy to have met the kids inside the RV behind him. He was mildly disapproving of the fact that they were sleeping in the same bed, they were much too young for that. However, this was an entirely new world that they were rushing headlong into, and some of the things that seemed so very important in the past were so much trivialities in the world as they knew it today. Let them screw their brains out if that's what they need to be happy and to find comfort, Floyd thought.

There had once been some kind of enmity between the two of them, that was a secret that both of them wore pretty plainly on their sleeves. They didn't talk about if but the girl, Sam, treated Andy with a kind of respect and kindness that spoke of an imagined and unpaid debt. It didn't matter though what had happened before; they were both completely happy with each other now. The Superflu was the great equalizer and it had wiped away any perceived difference that the two of them had before.

He couldn't explain the feeling that had come over him. He didn't feel particularly good or bad, he just felt cleaned out and drained. It felt as though someone had taken a high pressure hose and filled it with Mister Clean and just blasted out his insides; getting rid of all the poison that had been accumulating in him. He didn't feel happy, but for the first time in a while he felt content. It wasn't the kids that did it to him either, he had been feeling this way ever since his fly-over of the refugees outside of Philadelphia. They had jumped up and down and cheered when he flew over them. He felt exuberent; it was as though he had made the air show after all.

Floyd took one last drag off of his cigarette, the reddish cherry glowing bright orange for a moment before he dropped it to the ground and crushed the remainder out with the sole of his boot. He decided it was time to sleep, while he meant tomorrow to be a relaxing day, he DID need to get at least a little bit of maintenance work done on the plane.

He stood up and turned around to see Samantha standing in the doorway watching him curiously.

"Sorry" Floyd said. "I didn't even hear you get up."

Almost silently, Sam padded down the steps and sat down beside Floyd. The two of them sat in silence for minutes before Floyd finally spoke.

"Something on your mind?"

"I don't know" Sam said. "I guess I was kind of hoping that somewhere out there the world was still normal. I don't think I believed it...not really, anyway. But it at least made me feel better to _hope_ that the world was still okay somewhere. When you came, you kind of blew that whole way of thinking out of the water."

"Sorry" Floyd said.

Samantha shook her head. "No, it's not your fault. I was just being silly."

"Nothing silly about wanting life to be normal again, Samantha" Floyd said. "And maybe life can be normal again. It's just possible that normalcy is the reason that all of us seem to be called to meet somewhere in the middle of a cornfield. Just maybe that's where we are supposed to all meet and rebuild our civilization."

Floyd turned to face Samantha. "Do you believe in God, Samantha?"

Sam seemed to consider this for a moment and then nodded.

"So do I." Floyd said, smiling. "I hadn't been on speaking terms with Him for quite a many years, but he has been on my mind a whole lot in the last few days. I think that there's a reason that he allowed the Superflu to happen. I don't think that it's his doing, I can never believe that God would intentionally bring death and misery on his people, but I think he would allow his people to bring death and misery upon themselves.

"But he made sure that some of us were immune to the flu. I think that God has a purpose for those that he allowed to survive this, I think that we have something important to do in this world. I don't know about you, but to me that's a comforting thought."

Floyd smiled at Samantha and she cracked a weak and tired smile back at him.

"So what do you think he wants us to do?" Sam asked.

"I don't know." Floyd said, looking up at the stars. "But I'm sure we are going to find out."


	28. Chapter 28 July 9th

(**AN: I'm terribly sorry that its taken me so long to write the next chapter, I've been exceptionally busy this last few months. I'm back on track though and already have another couple chapters done – I'm just giving them a few days to rest so I can reread and edit them. I got a few emails and let me reassure everyone – I'm not quitting this story, I just took a little break.)**

"I'm sure you could have come up with a place more hot, humid and miserable than North Carolina to take us through, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where else it would be." Mason Hale complained, rubbing the back of his neck with a wet towel.

Sitting in the driver's seat beside him, Claudia smiled as she ignored him. The Landrover's windows were down, trying to take any advantage that could be made from the slight breeze coming in off of the ocean. The drive itself generated little moving air, rarely did they get over twenty miles per hour as they weaved in and out of the traffic, mostly on the shoulders which weren't already taken up by the cars of those who had pulled to the side of the road to die.

They left the freeways for a state highway in an attempt to avoid the heavy traffic which they were almost sure to hit if they went too close to the major cities of Greensboro or Durham, but the effort appeared to be in vain as they approached a little town named Carr which had, to ignore the horrible pun, cars backed up for miles due to some shoddy barricade that the townspeople had made during the last days of the flu in a final desperate attempt to keep the plague from spreading any further into their community. The number of bodied they could see slumped over the barricade suggested that they were altogether unsuccessful.

In the back seat, Neil thrashed about restlessly in his sleep. He mumbled words about Nebraska leading Claudia and Mason to believe that, at least for the time being, Neil was having the better of the two dreams. Neil was quiet and often sullen, Claudia could definitely see why. She and Mason had the distinct advantage of not having any extremely close people in their lives to lose to the plague; Neil on the other hand was a young man who had just lost his parents and both of his sisters. That kind of thing would have to play hell with your way of thinking; she just hoped that the guy would come out on the other side okay. It was one of those things that only time would tell for sure.

Claudia slid the Landrover through a narrow spot between the cars that had been rolled over to complete the barricade. There was no room for error; they made it through with only an inch or two of clearance on either side. As only a passing thought, it occurred to Claudia that this would be an excellent location for an ambush.

And that was when the gunfire started.

Shots rung out on both sides, the windshield starred in two places as bullets smashed into its surface. Claudia felt the minute hairs tingle as a bullet passed terrifyingly close to her forehead. Instinctively, she threw herself down into the floor of the vehicle.

"Get down!" she yelled, grabbing Mason and pulling him down with her. She heard movement in the back seat above the din of the gunfire. She hoped that it was the sound of Neil waking up and hitting the dirt rather than the sound of him slumping down with a bullet in his ear. Mason yelled something to her that she couldn't make out over the sound of the bullets peppering the vehicle, it sounded like someone had filled an aluminum can with pieces of gravel and shook it briskly. A shower of glass fell down onto her as the windshield finally gave way under the hail of bullets.

On the bright side, she reflected, whoever was out there wasn't armed all that well. Mostly .22's and 9 millimeters she figured by the way they were not penetrating the body of the car. A good thing too, because otherwise all three of them would probably be dead now. But that was all little comfort considering they couldn't even look out of the vehicle for fear of being hit. She was angry at herself for not realizing the potential for a trap that she had so easily allowed the three of them to be caught up in.

It was then that she noticed she had blood running down her neck and dripping on the floor underneath her.

Frantically, Claudia rolled herself around, feeling the angry prod of the Landrover's gear shifter poking her in the small of her back. Mason was above her, partially lying on top of her and partially across the bucket seats. His face was a mask of suppressed pain; his left hand was a glove of blood as he had it clamped tightly around his right forearm. She looked from the arm to his face in alarm, but Mason just shook his head.

"It's not that bad." he said inaudibly. But even though Claudia couldn't hear his voice over the din of small arms fire, she saw the reassurance and resolve in his eyes that they weren't about to give up quite yet.

As abruptly as it had begun, the shooting had stopped. Claudia could smell the sharp tang of antifreeze leaking out of her punctured radiator. She felt a dim sense of relief that she could hear Neil's panicked breathing coming from the back seat. He might have been hurt, but he was at least alive. She could hear the sound of booted feet crushing gravel underneath them as their assailants slowly and cautiously approached the now mostly demolished vehicle. They were almost definitely outnumbered, outgunned and out positioned, Claudia was fully aware that there was no way that any of them had much of a chance of making it out of there alive, unless...

Slowly, she pulled Mason down to rest under her as she covered over him, face down. Carefully and discretely she reached into the center console of the Landrover and retrieved the snub-nosed .38 revolver that was sitting there. Inch by inch she lowered it down and carefully tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. She had only barely finished and returned to her prone position when she heard and felt the car door opening behind her. Mason watched her the entire time and she hoped that he knew what she was planning and would be able to help out. When he closed his eyes and fell limp, Claudia knew that he understood.

"Did we get all three of them?" A teenaged boy's voice questioned behind her.

"No, looks like that boy back there is still alive." A man with a high pitched, reedy voice. "Pull him on out of there."

Claudia strained her ears, more noise to the other side. There were at least three of them and by the authority in Reedy Voice, he was the leader. She heard the back-seat passenger door open up.

"Com'on kid, get out." A third man said in a quiet southern drawl from the other side of the car.

"You two pull the other two out and put a bullet in the back of their heads if either of them are still alive." Southern Drawl commanded. Claudia shifted her focus from Reedy Voice to Southern Drawl; he was definitely the leader of the group.

"Too bad we killed the girl." The teenager snickered. "She could have been a lot of fun."

"Still could be if that's your thing." A fourth voice said and from the laughter around the car, Claudia identified at least two more of them. Six at least, not good odds at all.

Two hands grasped around her ankles and pulled her. Claudia cursed inwardly, if they pulled her out of the car this way, there was a pretty good chance that she would be dead long before she got a chance to make her move. But then her luck shifted, the arms that had been pulling her legs shifted and wrapped around her upper torso, lifting her from the vehicle.

She allowed herself to be dead weight right up until the last moment. Her arms swung around in an arc that could easily be mistaken for a lifeless body except that when they came to brush lightly on the revolver shoved into her waistband, her hand suddenly grasped it and pulled it free.

What she assumed to be the teenaged boy behind her didn't even have a chance to react as she pushed the gun back underneath his chin and pulled the trigger. His body shuddered violently once with his arms still around her. The kid's brains, along with the bullet, exited his body through the top of his skull in a spray of red and gray.

Claudia didn't give any of the others a chance to react. In a fraction of a second she scanned the five remaining men and put a bullet in the head of a Cuban gentleman who had a gun in his hand where he would probably be able to fire at her less than a second after they recovered from their shock. She could sense their weapons coming out of their holsters and off of their shoulders and she knew that she only had one real chance of all of the three of them getting out of there alive.

She pointed the revolver at Southern Drawl's head.

"Hold it!" She shouted, gripping the .38 in both hands as she steadied the barrel pointing right between the eyes of who she hoped was their leader. He was an older gentleman and he had almost cleared a .45 from his own waistband when he saw, quite clearly, that he had just been outdrawn. He immediately froze, the plain look of murder in his eyes as he stared at Claudia.

His men, however, did not freeze quite as quickly as he did. Claudia could hear the sound of metal on metal as guns from the other four men were pointed at her and prepared for firing.

"Tell them to put their weapons down." Claudia commanded; the hint of steel in her voice. "Or the two of us are going to go see what Hell's like together."

Southern Drawl looked at all of the men gathered round, including Neil who was standing off to one side, apparently forgotten. He apparently gauged their resolved against those of the young woman standing in front of him and was less than satisfied with what he saw.

"Now you don't want to be getting your pretty little head blown off today, do you miss?" He said, but the edge in his voice that he had when he was ordering about his men was gone. He was shaken. He knew it, she knew it. And more than likely, he knew that she knew.

"Tell your men to drop their guns." Claudia demanded.

"You know that's not gonna happen..." The man started to say, smiling.

"NOW!" Claudia shouted, and she was sure that she could see the man shudder slightly as she did so.

"You heard her boys." The man said, looking to his left and right.

Claudia could hear the sound of three handguns and a either a rifle or shotgun hitting landing in the pea gravel. Almost as if he were spring-loaded, Mason jumped out of the Landrover and grabbed the gun of the nearest would-be murderer, standing back a few feet behind them ready for them, almost wanting them to move and give him a reason to take out the anger and pain of being shot in the arm.

"What's your name?" Claudia asked Southern Drawl.

"Hal." The man said. "Hal Winston."

"Well Hal," Claudia said. "It seems that you are going to be coming with us."

Claudia looked around at the collection of vehicles and picked out a Dodge Ram pickup with no tailgate but otherwise in good condition.

"We are going to be taking that truck over there." Claudia instructed. "My two friends are going to ride in the cab while you and me are going to ride in the back. After we are out of town, and provided your little buddies here don't follow us, I will be letting you go. If any shit goes down that I don't like, I'm going to leave your ass dead on the side of the road…just like you intended to do to us. Now give me the keys."

Winston didn't comment, he just slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys.

- - - - - - - -

Claudia was willing to take no chances. She never once lowered the revolver from Winston's head for the entire trip. She knew that they were lucky to be alive and she had no intention of pushing that luck any more than in had already been pushed. She sat across from him, almost casually as the pickup rumbled lowly down the shoulder of the road, seemingly unfazed by the look the man was giving her that all but promised her death at the first opportunity.

Mason and Neil were in the cab of the truck. Mason was driving, albeit with difficulty. He had found a cloth that he fashioned into a bandage and wrapped around his right forearm. It did little good; the blood had already soaked through and dyed the cloth a deep red. She was going to need to do something about it, maybe stitch it up when she got the chance, but now all she could think about was getting as far away from here as possible and getting rid of Mister Hal Winston.

"Billions of dead people in the world" She finally asked him. "And you bastards are trying to do whatever you can to kill a few more…"

The man didn't respond, he only looked at her disinterestedly for a moment and then turned to look at the passing scenery.

"Why?" She asked, only it didn't sound so much as a question as it did a command.

"The world has moved on sweetheart." Winston said, his tone mocking. "The only people that will survive in this new world are the ones that take what they want when they want it. Everyone else is going to die because they are too weak to change."

Claudia hammered her fist twice on the top of the cab. Mason quickly pulled to the side of the road and slowed the Dodge down to a stop. He got out of the cab and Neil followed him a second later. Claudia glanced at Mason for a moment, he appeared to be in pain but he was coping with it.

She turned her attention back to the man sitting on the side of pickup bed across from her.

"You know what asshole?" She said pleasantly. "I think that you are absolutely right."

Claudia pulled back on the snub-nosed .38 revolver's trigger and one shot echoed out over the sea of cars inhabited only by the dead. Winston's face only had a split second to register surprise before a hole appeared just below his Adam's apple. His arms and legs flung outward as he tumbled from the bed of the truck and fell into the dust along the roadside.

She tucked the pistol back into her jeans and turned to the two men. Neil looked almost on the verge of panic at what he had just seen her do. Even Mason looked a little bit shocked, although the lapse in his composure was very short.

"What did you do that for!?" Neil asked, shocked. "He was unarmed and you said you were going to let him go!"

Claudia could still hear Hal Winston's last strangled breaths coming unseen from the other side of the truck as he slowly drowned in his own blood.

"He was their leader." Claudia explained, baring her teeth in a way that made Neil and even Mason take a couple steps back. "And he said it himself, 'the world has moved on'. If we let him go, he would go back to those idiots back there and just wait for the next group of people to come through and kill them instead.

"Society isn't civilized anymore. There's no court we can take that guy too, no police station we can lock him up at. The only way that we can deal with people that prey upon the helpless is to kill them and 'maybe' make the world a little bit safer."

Claudia jumped out of the side of the truck, sending up little puffs of dust as she landed on her feet at the roadside.

"Neil, I need you to ride in back for a while." Claudia said. "We are going to get out of here, but I need to be trying to dress Mason's wound a little bit better while he's driving. We can stitch it up tonight, but I want to get out of here as quick as we can before this guy's friends start to wonder why it's taking him so long to get back."

She didn't wait for discourse on her decision; she simply walked around the back of the pickup. She stepped over the body of Hal Winston, who had expired sometime while she was talking, and climbed into the passenger seat.


	29. Chapter 29 July 11th

"You're okay back there, right Andy?"

Andy was not alright. Andy was _most definitely _not alright.

Back when he was five or six years old, when his parents were both still alive and money was flush, the Verner family took a vacation to California. He had a dim recollection of the plane that they had flown on, and to a boy his age it has seemed huge. When Floyd Wilks said that they would be flying west to Nebraska, Andy's mind naturally drew images of his boyhood experience with planes and assumed that this experience would be roughly the same.

He had not even gotten into the back seat of the Cessna when he had already come to the conclusion that this was not going to be the case. They had barely gotten off of the ground when he realized that in a plane this small you can feel every single gust and eddy in the air around you. Every time they passed out of a thermal updraft, the plane would seem to fall for a split second, giving him the same feeling in his stomach as if he had just gone over the first hill on a rollercoaster.

No, Andrew Verner was not alright.

Another thing that he was coming to realize was that he had a fear of heights. Not one that seemed to be particularly sensitive to climbing a thirty-foot tree, but one that became all too obvious when looking out the window at suburban Missouri some five-thousand feet below him. Floyd had told them that they would be in Nebraska in two days flying at a leisurely pace. At this point Andy didn't know if he was going to avoid vomiting for another two hours – and possibly it would happen in a considerably shorter time than that.

"You're okay back there, right Andy?" Samantha repeated, turning around to look at him.

Sam had been having the time of her life. Unlike Andy's family, Sam's had always been a big fan of taking the ever-popular road trip. As such, she had never flown on a plane before; much less sitting in the copilot's like she was now. They had only been up in the sky for about ten minutes when Floyd was already starting to give her lessons on how to fly the plane. She was happily concentrating on the assignment Floyd had given her of keeping them on course by making minute corrections with her feet using the rudder pedals when she realized that she hadn't heard from Andy in a while.

"I'm okay." He croaked. Sounding bad even through the tinny distortion provided by the headsets they were all wearing.

Sam realized that Andy did look a little bit green. His face had taken on a pallid cast and his jaw was clenched in a way that suggested that he was afraid to open his mouth for fear of what might come out of it.

"Holy crap Andy, what's the matter?" Sam asked, alarmed.

"I'm okay." He repeated.

Andy shook his head, immediately regretting doing so. The simple movement sent his stomach reeling again and once more it became a physical battle to prevent their meager breakfast of cold Pop-Tarts and apple juice from coming back at him. He was becoming quite sure that he would rather walk to Nebraska and let it take six months than spend another day and a half inside of this little plane. Give me a big-assed jetliner any day, he thought.

"Floyd" Sam said, pointing to Andy.

Floyd had left the plane under the fearless, if not yet entirely capable, hands of Samantha while he was studying his charts – still learning how to navigate all over again without the aid of global positioning systems and VOR beacons. He was concentrating intently on the airspace charts over Missouri when he turned around, mildly curious, to see what Sam was worried about.

His eyes widened when he saw Andy's face and he immediately bent down and started fishing through a box underneath the seat.

"It's okay Samantha." He said. "You worry about doing what I told you, I'll worry about him."

Floyd fished a plastic medicine bottle out from under his seat, and opened it, sifting a pair of pills into his hand. He handed those back to Andy who looked at them for a moment.

"What are these?" He asked.

"Dramamine." Floyd said. "Go on and take them, they will make you feel better. Though you should have told me as soon as you were starting to feel sick, that way I could have given these to you before you had gotten into the bad shape that you are in now. And in case they don't work in time, here's this…"

Floyd handed Andy a plastic shopping bag. Andy took it gingerly, he really didn't want to throw up. It was something of a screwed up matter of pride to him, his only self-image had been getting gradually better during his time with Amanda, he was a little bit afraid that the image he had created for himself would suffer just a bit when he started barfing his guts out in front of her.

Andy crammed the pills into his mouth and chased it with a drink out of his bottle of water. At this point he didn't care if he was taking cyanide; dead would be a vast improvement on the way the airsickness was making him feel. Samantha cast an occasional worried smile back in his direction, but for the most part she had gone back to watching the altitude and course heading like Floyd had told her. He envied the cast iron stomach that she must have.

Floyd had been right though. Despite a really bad half hour or so where Andy wasn't sure if he was going to make it without spewing the contents of his stomach all over the back of the plane, he gradually began to feel better and even enjoy the flight a bit. They were deep into Missouri and with the airsickness behind them as well as the thermal turbulence of the early morning, they all became a great deal more talkative.

"What was it that you were flying in the Air Force?" Andy asked Floyd.

"I started with F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam." Floyd said. "I flew a few different planes, but mostly just them. After the war was over they started training me on F-15 Eagles. I flew those on through Desert Storm and up until I retired."

"That must have been exciting, to fly in two different wars." Samantha noted, a little distracted. She had been noticing a wall of black clouds moving in from the west. Floyd didn't seem all that concerned by them though, and she didn't see any reason she should be if he wasn't – but they worried her all the same.

"Well." Floyd said, shrugging as his Cheshire Cat grin faded a bit. "A war is a war. I wouldn't call it all that exciting. I enjoy flying, but really I'm not all that keen on killing people if I don't have to."

In fact, Floyd was more than aware of the thunderstorm that was moving in against them as they flew roughly northwest. He was a little bit concerned by them, because they were moving fast and he had no automated weather to tell him exactly how big or how severe that particular storm system was. However, Samantha would have been put even more at ease to know that Floyd already had charted out a couple of airports nearby to make a run for should the storm turn out to be something that they could not navigate.

"You've been in real dogfights?" Andy asked, almost in awe.

"Yep." Floyd said, not elaborating. He thought back to Vietnam for a moment and the convoy that he had nearly given his life to protect. It had felt good to be given the tag of "hero" but at the time he wasn't even thinking of being a hero, all he was doing was…

"Floyd?" Sam asked, troubled.

"What do you need kid?" He asked.

"Those clouds, aren't they moving pretty fast?" Sam asked, pointing at the storm moving in.

Floyd looked over and frowned, a sense of unease slowly starting to work its way into his gut. The clouds _were _moving in pretty fast; far faster than he had expected them to move. He didn't feel any turbulence in the air where they were right now to suggest that a fast-moving storm was coming. All the same, the storm front was frighteningly quick and appeared to be moving right in their direction.

"I have the controls." Floyd said. Samantha let go of the flight yoke as though it had burned her hands.

Floyd turned the plane to the north, resetting their course for Farmington Regional Airport, fifty or so miles south of Saint Louis. He could just barely feel the slight resistance of the wind moving in their direction as he turned perpendicular to the storm itself. But even this gave him a cold chill, as close as the storm was and as fast as it was moving, he should have been fighting with the controls to keep the plane on course – the plane's natural tendency being to turn into the direction with the least wind resistance. But in this case there was almost no wind at all.

"Is everything okay Floyd?" Sam asked, sounding a little shaken.

To be honest, Floyd was not all that sure that everyone was okay. He had never seen a storm that moved quite like this one did. He had heard all the old stories about the Bermuda Triangle and such, but he had always just dismissed them outright as superstitious hogwash. This was different though, it was almost as if some force was pushing those clouds directly across his path.

"Yeah, everything's okay." He lied. "I just don't want to take any chances without being able to have someone tell me exactly how bad this storm is. I'm going to take us down at an airport about fifteen minutes from here; I just want to get her on the ground and tied down in case it turns out that this is going to be a bad one."

Floyd pulled out the throttle a little bit and simultaneously nudged the nose of the plane down, trying to bleed off some of his altitude so he would (hopefully) be able to coast right down onto the runway rather than spend any more time in the air than absolutely necessary.

They talked very little over the next few minutes, Sam was getting uneasy as she watched the storm move. In only ten minutes or so, it had grown two, then four, the eight times bigger out the left side windows. Floyd hummed a few bars of some song, but even that was half-hearted and quickly stopped.

Andy too, was getting a little uneasy. He was the only person to no take his eyes off of the storm since Sam had first alerted him to it. It looked less like a thunderstorm than it did an actual living thing. It seemed to writhe and undulate as it moved steadily closer. And move closer it did, with a pace that seemed to defy logic. It was as if the storm had the singular goal of hunting them down and devouring them within its massive form.

He could see flashes of lighting emanate from within the clouds themselves and the landscape underneath them was completely obscured by the torrential rains that fell from them. And there they were, in a tiny single-engine plane with the end-all answer to thunderstorms bearing down upon them. All Andy could think about was his dreams and the crow that had been in his house the night that Samantha had stayed over. He knew that he was being ridiculous, but it was almost like there was a palpable sense of evil coming from the storm itself.

All at once, the sky around them had grown dark and sinister. The fast-moving storm had blotted out the early-morning sun and plunged them into an unnatural twilight. At the same time the entire plane shuddered violently, Samantha let out a small scream at the feeling as though an invisible hand had shoved them violently from the west.

"We're in trouble." Both Andy and Floyd said at the same time. From Andy it was a question, from Floyd it was a stated absolute.

"Get us down." Andy said as the plane started to shudder violently, his words sounding hollow and toneless through the headset back into his ears. He didn't know where the hell they were even supposed to go. By Floyd's earlier estimate, they were still at least five minutes away from the airport and at the rate they were going, the storm was going to overtake them in less than a minute.

Fortunately, Floyd did know where they were supposed to go, although the knowledge would have done more to frighten the two teens in his care than it would have to reassure them. He spotted a clearing off to the east and made a sharp banking turn toward it. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Samantha's expression; she was wide eyed and gripping the armrests in terror with both hands, her nails almost puncturing the old vinyl.

He had just pulled out of the turn when the storm broke over them, the entire plane seemed to be pulled in all directions at once as the turbulence tried to throw them from the sky. Both of the teens cried out. Andy, who was not buckled in, flew up out of his seat for a moment as though someone had given him a firm kick in the ass.

The only person who was not scared witless was Floyd; and even he was more shaken than he had been in a good many years. Certainly he was more concerned with crashing than he had been during the Gulf War. More concerned than he ever had been, in fact; except for the one time he DID crash his Phantom into the jungles of Vietnam.

The rain did not so much as spray across the windshield as is _gushed_. The clearing that had been easy to see a moment earlier was almost completely obscured in a matter of seconds. The plane still pitched about violently, the loud screech of the stall alarm tearing through their headphones every few seconds, telling the pilot that the winds were preventing the wings from generating the necessary lift to stay aloft; and without that the plane was little more than a paperweight.

But if that registered with Floyd, it certainly didn't show on his face. Everything faded to black around him except for the clearing and the instrument panel. No more did he hear the thunderstorm, nor did he hear the franticness of Andy and Samantha talking to each other as Sam turned around in her seat to claps her hands together with the boy's as they waited for the end to come. The only thing he saw was the altimeter, his airspeed and his intended landing site. He rode out each gust of wind and even stopped trying to think about how quickly the storm had attacked them. In the mind of Floyd Wilks, it was a clear and calm day and this was nothing more than an emergency landing drill.

He leisurely reached over and pushed the flaps lever straight down. The plane tried to nose up, but he held it steady, guiding the plane in closer and closer – just off from the center of the clearing. The readings on the gauges were flawed, the wind causing the air speed to jump back and forth wildly, but all of this didn't affect him in one way or another; he saw through the false readings and in the last few moments before the plane touched the grassy field; Floyd knew that whatever happened next, he had just made the best landing he was capable of delivering.

And then the plane touched down.

There was immediately an ear-splitting shriek of shearing metal. Samantha screamed, almost drowning out the sound. All three of them felt as though they had been thrust into the middle of awashing machine on a spin cycle. The world seemed to whirl around them. The plane yawed about and Andy saw the wing dig a long elliptical gouge through the earth, sending a spray of dirt and stones flying through the air just before the wing itself tore free of the fuselage.

And then he blacked out.


	30. Chapter 30

As the middle of summer set in across the United States, the Superflu slowly began to extinguish itself. Like flames leaping from gasoline-soaked wood in an untended fireplace, there was simply no more fuel left to consume and the fire slowly died down until it was nothing but red-glowing embers leaving ashes in their wake. The dead numbered in the hundreds of millions and across the globe they would soon amount to more than five billion.

All in all, more than 99.6 percent of the population of the US was dead, and the remaining few were tortured by dreams that were drawing them to one of two locations in the country. Nebraska or Las Vegas; it was a thought that warred in the heads of every survivor of the flu. During the daylight it was easier to ignore, the sunlight is sufficient to banish most of the demons of the night. But nobody could forget that they would fall asleep after the sun departed, and once again they would have to cope with the two diametrically opposed forces that seemed to be battling each other for the souls of the survivors.

It would be easy (and we often try) to write people off as being either "good" or "evil". But in reality as we know it, very few people fit either one of those templates perfectly. Most human beings are simply some shade of gray. Obviously it would be easier to recognize good over evil if the world was filled with only carbon copies of Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler, but it is not. Sometimes people are just products of their own environments.

Samuel Haverston thundered across Indiana atop his Harley-Davidson. In a way the Superflu was a huge liberation for him. He had spent the last ten years lying low and deathly afraid every time he sighted a police cruiser behind him. His appearance was not that of a man that set the average boy in blue at ease either; at nearly six-foot six-inches tall and sporting greasy long hair, Sam Haverston was a beast of a man that made the enormous bike that he sat upon look small by comparison.

Sam's unfortunate disagreement with the law came in the form of a brawl that had happened in Reno, Nevada during the early nineties. The club he had been with at the time, the Desert Vipers, had happened to be in the same bar on the same night as another motorcycle gang had rolled into town.

It had gotten late and fueled on artificial courage provided by both alcohol and the bravado of being surrounded by friends egging each other on, a fight had started in that Reno bar. Sam wasn't sure exactly how it had happened, but he was trading fists with a man that was nearly as large as him when knives came out. By the time that it was over, Sam was holding a bloody knife in his hand and the man he was fighting with was on the ground; still and unmoving – a pool of crimson surrounding him on the bare wood floor.

The feeling of shock and horror in his gut was one that Neil Dawes would have been able to empathize with all too well. Sam hadn't meant to kill the man. It was just an argument that heated into a fistfight; and then it became something more. He dropped the knife, terrified when he heard the sound of police sirens getting closer. He turned to the door and ran out, never again seeing the friends that he had been riding with for the last five years.

Only a frantic phone call to his mother in San Diego gave him the clue that he indeed was being sought after by the Reno Police Department. They had been by the house looking for him as part of a murder investigation. When his mother asked him if he had killed a man in Reno, Samuel lied and told her that he had not. After he had hung up the phone, he got back onto his ride and went off into the sunset, his very existence being nothing more than rumor ever since.

Then the Superflu hit.

Samuel's first reactions had been of shock and horror over the number of dead and dying that surrounded him. He had been living with a girl he met at a bar in Detroit some three or four weeks earlier. She had gotten sick during the third week of June and both her and her three-year-old boy had died within twenty minutes of each other on the morning of the 26th.

He sat in the house for two days afterwards just reeling at the surreality of what was going on around him. But then gradually, a thought had started to creep its way into his head. At first it was nothing more than a barely perceptible whisper, but it slowly grew louder until it really dawned on him the awful side effect that the end of the world had brought with it.

Samuel Haverston realized that he was free.

There was no more looking over his shoulder and waiting for the day to come when he would be arrested and stand trial for a drunken lapse in judgment. He was finally free to do whatever he wanted and no longer feel like he was on the run. But despite this realization, he had very little concept of what he wanted to do.

For days he had rode aimlessly around Michigan and northern Ohio, not with any particular purpose in mind but simply going in whichever direction his whims took him. He rode along the coast of Lake Erie and even decided to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland before the dreams finally started to get the best of him. On a whim that was no more or less remarkable than any other he had, he turned his motorcycle west.

It was on July 11th that Sam Haverston met Jill Carlson.

Jill Carlson had lived in the small town of Ashley, Indiana all of her life. She had grown up as the daughter of an overbearing Baptist minister who impressed on her from a very early age that young girls were to be subservient to their parents and then to their husbands. As such, she was not particularly outgoing and except for her family, she was often forgotten altogether by those around her. The fact that she had married a man, a pastor, who was incredibly outgoing himself and was well-liked by seemingly everyone did not do much to help the situation.

Indeed, Jill Carlson really did not see anything wrong with the fact that she lived her life being completely blotted out in the shadow of her husband, Steven Carlson. She was a stay at home mother who home-schooled their two young children and aside from standing proudly beside her husband, rarely had an impact on anyone else in her life. Anyone who questioned the place she had made for herself only earned a half-hearted rebuke from Mrs. Carlson; she would tell that she was doing her duty before God and her family.

All of this changed as the month of June came to a close. Jill watched tearfully as her husband and two sons got gradually weaker and weaker. Pastor Steve Carlson was constantly in and out of the house, going to the homes of one sick member of their congregation after another; seemingly unconcerned with his own well-being. The flu finally claimed his life on the evening of the 28th and both of their sons went home to Jesus on the morning of the 29th.

When all was said and done, Jill found herself alone in their large two-story house and did not have any idea what she was supposed to do. Her entire life up to that point was so tied to the needs and desires of others that now that they were all gone, all she could do is sit in a chair and stare blankly at the walls; somehow sure that any moment someone would waltz through the front door and tell her what she should be doing with her life.

Jill's condition deteriorated as her sense of isolation grew worse and worse. After she had her first dream of the dark man on the first of July, she began to seriously wonder if maybe her husband and children were alive and it was she that had died and gone to Hell. She cried herself to sleep every night, praying to Jesus that she might be reunited with her family.

The thoughts passed, though.

After a week she started to recover from her depression and decided to get out of the house. The sense that there might be something to life that was more than just serving others started to dawn in her mind. She had decided that these dreams had to mean something, so she might as well start on her way and find out what.

She went down to the local Wal-Mart and appropriated herself a ten-speed bicycle (after praying God's forgiveness for stealing). The sense that she was on the first real adventure of her life was palpable as she pedaled her way out of town. She had packed herself a lunch and figured that she would find more food along the way, but at that moment all she wanted to do was get away from the little town of Ashley and see the countryside for a while.

She had been on a mission trip to help build a church just outside of Mexico City once when she was sixteen. Aside from that, her family never really took vacations so it was truly rare for her to travel somewhere just for the sake of traveling. But that's what this felt like, it felt almost like a vacation for her – something that Samuel Haverston would have vehemently agreed with.

Speaking of Samuel; it was in Ekhardt, Indiana that he met Jill Carlson. He had met surprisingly few people as he worked his way across the Midwest. He had the idea that the few individuals that were out and about heard the demonic roar of the Harley's pipes and immediately got out of sight for fear of what motorcycle gang refugee must be bearing down upon them.

It was partially because of this that when he drove by the quaint little park at the center of Ekhardt on the morning of the 11th that he had to do three takes before he finally convinced himself that there indeed was a woman sitting on a park bench and casually reading a book. Sam slowed the bike to a stop and killed the engine, dismounting and dropping the kickstand to the ground.

He walked up, almost a little bit taken back by the woman's casual manner. If she had seen or noticed him in any way, she gave no sign of it. She just continued to read from the book held open in front of her (it was the Bible, Sam could see) and eating Pringles potato chips out of a tube beside her.

"Doesn't it hurt your ears to ride that thing?" She asked.

Sam flinched a little, aware that the woman had indeed noticed him.

"Uh… I guess I just get used to it." He replied, noticing the Schwinn leaning against the tree behind her.

"You aren't planning on hurting me are you?" The woman asked, matter-of-factly; looking up from behind her Bible. The look on her face was not one of fear, just of passive submissiveness.

"Me?" Sam asked, wide-eyed. "No! I just haven't seen anyone in a few days and you surprised me. I wanted to see if you were really alive."

"Have you decided that I am?" The woman asked.

Sam was dumbfounded. He wasn't sure if the woman was being coy or if the question was legitimate.

"I think so." He said, unsure of what answer the woman really expected from him.

"Okay, good." She said, smiling at him. She had an insane, shell-shocked look to her face that made Sam a little uneasy about her mental well-being. But all the same…

"Uh, I'm headed off to Nebraska. If you are heading off in the same direction, I'd be happy to give you a lift." Samuel suggested, pointing at his motorcycle. "We can get there a lot faster on my bike than you can on yours."

"I don't even know you." Jill said flatly.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" Samuel said, wiping the day's dirt and grime off of his hand and offering it to Jill. "I'm Samuel Haverston."

"I'm Jill Carlson." Jill said, taking the enormous hand in her tiny one and shaking it daintily. "But I can't come with you, I'm sorry."

The young woman smiled at him apologetically.

"Are you sure?" Sam said. "It could be dangerous going all by yourself, I could…you know…protect you."

"I bet you could, mister Haverston." Jill said. "I'm not going to Nebraska though."

Sam shook his head, uncomprehending. "That's still cool, is there somewhere that I could drop you off in between here or there?"

"No" Jill said, smiling. "I have been having dreams of Las Vegas and I'm heading that way."

Samuel was dumbfounded. It hadn't occurred to him that other people might be having the same dreams as he was; he had simply figured that he was going crazy. There was no evasiveness in her statement; to her it was nothing more than a fact for Sam to take however he chose. But if she was headed to Vegas that meant…"

"Why would you be going to Las Vegas?" Sam asked.

Jill calmly closed her bible and stood up, aware of the man's questioning eyes on her the entire time.

"The Dark Man has offered me my old life back." She replied simply. "And all I have to do is serve him."

Sam didn't say anything, he only watched in confusion as the woman walked over to her bike and got it ready to continue her trip into the desert.

"It was very nice to meet you mister Haverston," was the last that thing she said to him, and then she was gone.

Sam watched as she got onto her bike and rode away. He watched until she had ridden slowly down the street and turned the corner, never to be seen by him again. It boggled his imagination how with all the terrible things he had done with his life; he could be headed to Nebraska to start over – on the good side, as he saw it. And someone who had always done all the right things with her life and served the very spiritual being she was now prepared to turn against, could be so willing to go to _him._

It didn't make sense.

With a heavier heart than he had when he had stopped, Sam got back onto his bike and started the rumbling, throaty engine. It was time to keep going. Up ahead was a woman named Mother Abigail; and a new life.


	31. Chapter 31 July 14th

**I**

Why are you wasting your time, Claudia?

Claudia turned around, wide-eyed.

Her surroundings were odd, almost alien to her. She was standing on a bleak white-sanded beach at the edge of a seemingly endless sea. She had no idea how long she had been there, staring at the waters as the sun slowly settled down toward its resting place beneath the horizon. The water appeared to be aflame as the waves caught the fading sunlight and gleamed a fiery bronze.

It wasn't until the voice behind her spoke that she really even realized what she was doing. Certainly it had not occurred to her to wonder what she was doing in this place when she last remembered going to sleep in a tent in their campsite in northern Mississippi. And if she wasn't there, then surely she must be…

"Dreaming?" The voice asked.

Claudia found herself gaping speechlessly as she stood face to face with a man clad in denim. It was the same man she had seen in her dreams night after night for what seemed like months. Only now he stood before her, not looking all that menacing in the slightest. Indeed, the only thing terribly unsettling about his was the impish grin across his face which spoke of jokes at other peoples' expense; perhaps at humanity's expense.

"Well mayhap you are dreaming, and mayhap you ain't." The man said, perfectly imitating Mother Abigail's country drawl.

Claudia took a step backward, the surf coming in and washing over her bare feet. The water was cold, far colder than she would have thought it would be; but that wasn't what made the shiver go up her back.

"You're…" Claudia said.

"Randall Flagg at your service." The man in the jean jacket and the cowboy boots said to her. "And you really should do something about that speech impediment you seem to have, my dear. Someone might mistake you for a simpleton, and we both know that you are far from that."

"What is it that you want from me?" Claudia asked, detesting the quaver of fear that heard in her own voice.

Flagg's grin broadened. "I want only what every king has wanted since the beginning of time; a kingdom and knights to enter into my service. I want you to join me, Claudia Donaldson."

"I've already made up my mind." Claudia said, defensively.

"You would go to the old woman?" Flagg said, coughing out several great and melodramatic belly laughs. "You can do so much better, my dear. The old woman will make you just another one of her sheep, but I can help you to realize greatness. I can give you everything that you could ever desire."

"I don't need anything, I have everything I need." Claudia replied, another wave washing cold over her feet, though she couldn't quite bring herself to step out of the water and closer to the devilish man before her.

"You say that now, but I think you will change your mind. You are a warrior and you need so much more than they are willing to provide you." Flagg told her. "You desire order and you will never find it in Nebraska, or in Colorado for that matter.

"You fail to understand how truly extraordinary you are. If only you had been born in the right world, my dear; what a gunslinger you could have made."

"I don't understand what you mean." Claudia said.

"You needn't. All you need to do is remember that sooner or later, you are going to come to me Claudia Donaldson." The Darkman told her. "You will come to me and I will reward you for it."

Flagg grinned in a way that Claudia found extremely disquieting.

"And if you don't, the only thing that's going to await you is this."

He stepped forward quickly, with his hands outstretched. Claudia tried to jump away but she seemed to be cemented in place as both hands pushed against her shoulders, shoving her backwards. Claudia's eyes went wide and flailed her arms outward as she fell. The world seemed to go black all around her and she continued to plummet long after her mind told her that she should have landed on her back in the water and sand.

Flagg chuckled and Claudia screamed.

**II**

Claudia awoke with a start, jumping up out of her sleeping bag so quickly that she banged her head on one of the aluminum poles holding up the tent around her. Gone was the stark and barren landscape at the edge of the ocean and instead she was surrounded by the darkness, bathed in golden light that filtered in through the think nylon shell of the dome tent she had taken a late afternoon nap in.

Unzipping the tent flap, Claudia climbed out into the cloyingly humid night air of the Deep South. The unsettling dream quickly faded away as she heard the laughter of those gathered around the large campfire. She stood back for a few moments, intent on the exercise in normalcy that seemed to be playing out in front of her. Laughing and joking were qualities that seemed to be scarce in all of their lives as of late, and seeing so much behavior going on all around her which seemed to borderline on happiness filled her with a sense of awe.

Neil was sitting in a folding camp chair and talking to an eleven-year-old girl named Jennifer Aikins. The girl was part of a group that they had met in Georgia a couple days earlier. Claudia's group had been folded into the larger group but somehow everyone elected her their leader. Already the two smaller groups had discussed turning to the north and heading to Nebraska. Claudia had given into this decision without a fight, she had known for the last few days that it was a pipe dream to have any real hope of finding a remnant of her family alive after the flu.

The young girl named Jennifer could speak a little bit, but it was terribly difficult to understand her most of the time. She had been mostly deaf since a near-fatal staph infection when she was five or six years old. And while she could understand everyone around her by reading lips, she was clearly frustrated that nobody was around who could interpret sign language, without which she had a very difficult time communicating.

Some of the other group members had commented that she could be downright hostile when she was having a hard time being understood. Claudia could certainly imagine how hard it must be living in a world where you can understand what everyone is saying to you, but you can't make your own feelings known. Apparently things had improved considerably in the last couple days, Neil and Jennifer had taken to each other like flies to honey. At that moment, the two of them were laughing and smiling as the younger girl taught the teenaged boy sign after sign; their pathways of communication growing slowly but steadily stronger with each moment.

She turned her attention to Keith and Angela. The middle-aged couple both worked for the telephone company down in Florida when the shit storm finally landed. They had known each other only peripherally, but on one surreal day in late June they both showed up to work out of habit and found that they really no longer needed to. Being unattached before the Superflu, they had both weathered the storm a little more easily than most; already they were talking about getting married and maybe having kids – Oh how everyone wanted so much to get back to a normal life again.

It was breathtakingly wonderful though, Claudia thought. Just a couple weeks earlier she had imagined that it would be a good long time before she saw any semblance of life that she would think of as "normal". Yet here it was; at a KOA campground in northern Mississippi, there were a dozen or so people huddled around a bonfire. They were telling stories and making jokes and getting pleasantly drunk as the twilight faded away into nighttime. The feeling of togetherness had become their own personal Lourdes, they had risen from the waters feeling healed of the mental damage that Captain Trips had done to them.

"What are you smiling about?" Mason said, walking out from behind a tree; presumably having just answered the call of nature.

Claudia grinned at him. He still had the tell-tale signs of the encounter at the roadblock, both physical and psychological. He was wearing a muscle shirt that plainly displayed the bandages wrapped around his forearm where the bullet had penetrated but (thankfully) caused no serious or permanent damage. Mason was determined that nobody was going to get the drop on them again, so much that he now carried a nine millimeter Glock pistol in an underarm holster nearly every waking moment of the day. Claudia empathized with him; the nightmares she had about that shooting gallery almost rivaled those of the Walking Dude himself.

"I don't know." She said, pushing at a small acorn with the toe of her boot and suddenly feeling as uncomfortable in her skin as a girl in junior high. "I guess it's just nice to see everyone so happy."

Mason said nothing as he stopped to set his beer bottle on the ground before pulling Claudia into his arms and kissing her; an act that she returned every bit as passionately. Dimly she heard and excited "whoop" and some laughter from someone over by the fire pit.

This was a new development as well.

Claudia couldn't even point her finger at the exact moment that her relationship had started with Mason, it just did. She supposed that in a way it had started the day they met in Pennsylvania. She had simply been so preoccupied by everything else that she hadn't realized the mutual attraction until Mason finally acted on it.

They had been somewhere in Louisiana a couple days earlier; talking way into the night after everyone else had gone to sleep when he abruptly kissed her. His expression afterward was comical; a mixture of want for her and shock over what he had just done. Claudia was shocked as well; shocked at the realization that it was exactly what she wanted, even though she wasn't consciously aware of it. The relief in Mason's face was evident as Claudia leaned forward to kiss him back.

The two days since then had been an emotional rollercoaster for Claudia. In a way it had seemed wrong for her to be happy with all that had happened, but she was nonetheless. She was in the most unlikely of places in an embrace with a man that she had fallen in love with and in her mind; the moment was all that mattered. She wrapped her arms tightly around Mason, barely even feeling the butt of the ever-popular Glock digging into her ribs as they kissed.

Neil glanced over at the two of them and grinned, the flicker in his eyes causing the young girl in front of him to look over her shoulder at what he was looking at. The two of them shared knowing smiles; Neil had shared a tent with Claudia and Mason since they had all come together in Maryland, but had recently struck off on his own – not because he was asked to, but because he was getting an increased sense that the couple would prefer to have a bit of privacy.

Of course, they both denied wanting him to leave and asked him repeatedly if he was sure. He just smiled and said that he was. In truth he was not at all, but it was very hard for someone his age to admit something as childish as being afraid of the dark, or of the boogeyman – even a boogeyman so real as Randall Flagg.

But there were other factors too. If this had all happened four or five days ago, he probably would have felt very alone and out of place. But there were eleven of them in the group now, and the camaraderie that came with that – especially in his friendship with Jennifer made a lot of things that would have been a big deal only a short time ago suddenly feel like nothing at all.

The girl smiled and said something to him. It was a question, but like many things that the deaf girl said, he really couldn't make much of it out. She got frustrated very easily by most people's difficulties understanding her, but this didn't seem to apply to Neil – she simply kept trying to find other ways to make herself understood until he got it.

She pointed to Neil and then tapped her fingers on his forehead. He looked confused for a moment and then understanding dawned in his eyes.

"What am I thinking about?" Neil asked, unsure.

Jennifer Aikins nodded to him happily.

Neil shrugged. More laughed from the fire pit exploded as a woman named Monika Sellers was telling jokes that were both racy and somewhat pornographic in nature. Neil was actually quite relieved that Jennifer was facing him and not reading the older woman's lips instead. The assembled group laughed at the jokes good-naturedly, a tantalizing smell rising up from around them as someone was cooking slices of canned ham in an iron skillet over the flames.

"I don't know." Neil said, barely talking over a whisper. He didn't really need to, all the information Jennifer needed was given to her by the movements of his mouth, not by the actual sounds coming out of it. "I guess I'm just not looking forward to another night of dreams is all."

The girl held one arm vertical and brought her other hand down below the plane it created for a moment then brought her hand up and grabbed at an imaginary hat brim before bringing the hand down to her breastbone.

Neil knew the sign; it was one that she had made more than a few times in the last couple days. Two words: DARK and MAN. Neil nodded, frowning a little bit. He indeed was not looking forward to another night of dreams about Mister denim and cowboy boots. He was uncomfortable with Jennifer knowing how afraid he was, but he wasn't about to lie to her about it either. He had done enough lying before the plague and had no interest in returning to old habits.

The girl pointed to him and then pointed to a tent over near the edge of the camp.

Neil laughed and shook his head. "No. I don't need to stay with you and Anna tonight. I will be fine, and with any luck I won't even have the dreams tonight. But let's not even talk about it right now. It's not even that late yet. I think we should just get something to eat and then play some cards."

This prompted a smile from the girl. She loved to play card and knew a mind-boggling variety of games – of which she was excellent at all of them. Of the hundred or so hands they had played in the last couple days, Neil could count on one of his own hands the total number that he had bested her in.

She responded with a flurry of signs as he face returned to a mask of concern. Neil didn't understand a lot of them, but understood all the same.

"I'll be fine" he said.

She spoke in the convoluted and mostly unintelligible way of the deaf, the way of someone that has not been able to hear what they are saying for many years. Neil understood completely though.

"I hope you are right." Jennifer said.


	32. Chapter 32 July 15th

"I hope you are right."

Thomas Red Deer, old Viejo Loco, mostly ignored the voice coming from behind him as he stood at the edge of a great precipice about a dozen miles south of Carlsbad, New Mexico. In front of him was an old and long railroad bridge that extended from one end of the old dry river to the other, it was the only way across that didn't involve walking for ten or fifteen miles in either direction to find a more pedestrian-friendly crossing.

The gulch itself was far more than just a dried up and long unused river…it was one of the final legacies of the world that was. This one of the countless places where the US government took the dead when they couldn't figure out what else to do with the number of corpses that seemed to grow exponentially with each passing day. Here below them in the Carlsbad Wash were untold hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men, women and children. Whatever dignities the assembled had hoped for in their death, they did not receive. The final atrocity enacted upon them by the powers that they counted on to keep them safe was to be thrown into an uncovered mass grave. Even Thomas, who under most circumstances was unfazed by the acts that man performed upon itself, was struck with a distinct unease about dwelling for too long in such a location.

This was a place of death and a place of great evil.

Behind him stood a woman named Cassandra Knott, and what a surly and disagreeable traveling companion she was. The two had met in a city named Torreon, just a few days after he had departed from Del Rio. Thomas had his duty in mind, he knew where he was going although not what would be expected of him there, a fellow traveler tagging along with him was something that he neither encouraged nor opposed. Cassandra, however, almost immediately turned out to be a most unpleasant individual.

The woman, both middle aged and overweight saw the Indian man as something of a savior when they first met. She didn't know what it was that she wanted to do, or where to go, but she was damn well sick of being stuck in Southern Texas in the blistering 110 degree weather and without air conditioning. She had been polite enough, even grateful, for the first day or so. But after it was clear that Thomas was going to at least tolerate her presence, she started to show more of her true personality. She was prone to sullen little tantrums any time she didn't get her way, she was incapable of reciprocating even the most basic of help that Thomas provided for her, even for so simple a thing as cooking a meal.

But the worst was that she seemed to complain unceasingly. The entire day of walking would be an unending diatribe of what was wrong with her world, with Texas, with the vacated federal government. In fact, it seemed that the only time that there was true peace and quiet was either when she was asleep, or when she was between rants and attempting to think up some new things to complain about.

"I'm thirsty and we are almost out of water." She had said in the early afternoon of the day before.

Thomas heard her speak but said nothing, feeling that the comment warranted no response on his part. But like a young child, the woman simply said it louder; figuring that she just didn't make herself heard as an explanation for the silence rather than the more accurate fact that Viejo Loco was simply ignoring her and her incessant prattle.

"I'm thirsty and we are almost out of water." She repeated, a little testily.

"I know." He said, not elaborating.

"Well what are we going to do about it?" Cassandra asked, the irritation in her voice so obvious that it was almost tangible. It was clear that the woman was probably not used to having to do things herself, or ask others to do something for her more than once. And it was also obvious that what when she said "what are _we_ going to do about it" she really meant "what are _you_ going to do about it."

"We have enough water to get us to the next town if we conserve carefully. Your body will continue to function long after you are feeling thirsty, your sense of thirst is nothing more than your body giving you a friendly reminder that it's time to drink. You will be okay." Thomas said, and then added: "And besides, you will survive much longer and you will feel far less thirsty if you would keep your mouth shut as often as possible."

That wasn't all though, even though it should have been. His stinging rebuke bought him a few minutes of hard-earned silence, but she started up again before they had let another mile lay behind them. This time she started complaining about walking, she had on multiple occasions suggested that they should get a car and drive to Nebraska or Colorado, or wherever the Indian had decided to take them. Thomas would have none of that either, he felt that walking was important for him then, even necessary – walking would help empty out his soul so that he would be prepared for what was waiting for him in Boulder.

Thomas stepped out onto the first railroad tie of the old and rickety bridge crossing the gulch. It was not a modern bridge with a walkway to allow ease of passage for the occasional railroad man to perform maintenance. It was a very old bridge where the only place to walk was upon the ties themselves, being careful not to step between them or off of the, because to do so meant a fast trip to the floor of the gulch below. He walked with a casual ease, he was not looking down, only at the ties in front of him. If there was any fear within, it did not show upon his face.

"This is crazy… let's go around." Cassandra said, standing at the edge of the bridge behind him.

Thomas didn't stop walking.

"The fear is only within your mind. The ground is flat and level, just as though you were walking through a grassy field. Anything else is only an illusion." He said, not bothering to look back.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Cassandra yelled after him, shrilly.

"It means," Thomas explained. "That you can either find your courage and follow me, or you can stay here. I do not have time to find another way across; I must be on my way whether you choose to follow me or if you choose to seek your own path. Either way, the choice is yours and yours alone, Cassandra Knott."

No more words were spoken between them as Thomas returned his concentration to the journey ahead of him, or rather, the journey that existed within his mind. He barely looked down at the railroad ties or the dust and grit upon them that fell the dizzying height to the ravine floor below every time he brushed a thin layer of it through the space between the thick wooden slats. But for all intents and purposes, Viejo Loco wasn't there, he was somewhere else. He was far away and within the depths of his murky past.

Thomas Red Deer was not more than eight or nine the last time he tested the will of fate and that of the spirits in a race across a railroad bridge in Arizona. He and his friend Fast Elk had gone fishing and the long day had made them too weary to take the long way back to the Yavapai Reservation. That left the more treacherous route; the way across the railroad bridge which crossed one of the craggy and serpentine fingers that stretched away from the Grand Canyon to the west.

It had not been the first time they had taken such a route. They had done so frequently, knowing the train schedule was generally consistent and that the only place that they truly were in danger was the middle of the bridge where they would not have time to make it to the other side should a train come upon them.

Looking backwards through time, Thomas knew that the tendency of youth is toward foolishness and the taking of risks best left alone, but at the time there seemed so little harm in saving themselves three quarters of an hour to follow the railroad bridge. The placement of the sun had told them enough to know the risks, but it was not yet time for the afternoon train to make its way through their little patch of land. Close, but not quite yet.

They set off across the timber beams as casually and bravely as the much older Thomas Red Deer did now, many hundred miles to the east. Heights did not scare them, the possibility of slipping and falling off of the bridge did not scare them; the only fear that they had was the possibility of the train sneaking up on them while they were somewhere in the middle third of the bridge where escape was impossible by any means save jumping to your doom to the rocky gulch below.

"Why are you so quiet today _shidizee_?" Fast Elk asked him, the nickname had been his for years. He was called "younger brother" by many of his friends because of how small he was for his age.

Thomas shrugged, choosing to ignore the slight for the time being. "I don't know. I had a dream last night, a bad one. I guess it still has me spooked."

He waited for the other boy to chide him, to belittle him for fearing a dream. Young Apache boys were not supposed to scare easily and it had been somewhat of a faux pas for him to admit to such. Still, the teasing never came, Fast Elk just walked on in silence for a moment before speaking again.

They were very casual in their walk, far too casual. They were unaware that the train had left Flagstaff very early that day and it was ahead of schedule. The engineer was making good time and saw no reason to slow himself down if possible, he wanted to complete his route and be home as early as he could.

"Tell me about the dream." Fast Elk asked, finally.

"It was just stupid." Thomas said. "I dreamed of a large crow that had flown through my window and perched on the foot of my bed. It whispered things in my ear, it whispered about how it was going to kill all of my family and my friends and how there was nothing that I would be able to do to stop it."

Now the teasing would come, Thomas thought, not trusting in his rarely serious friend to consider that there was anything beneath the face value of a nightmare. But even then, the ridicule never came. His friend was simply silent

"My grandfather told me to put it out of my mind." Thomas explained. "He said that dreams are rarely to be taken literally and that it might just be a message about something else. He said to ignore it and only think of it again when I find the meaning behind it."

"Your grandfather is a fool, _shidizee_" Fast Elk said. "He's supposed to be a leader of our tribe but he lets the _inashoog _white man do all that they want. He lets them beat us for speaking our language, for medicine dancing. Your grandfather is a coward."

Thomas' temper flared, he had a hard time arguing with Fast Elk, he had seen and questioned many of these same things himself. However, the honor of the matter made his face grow hot with anger, upset that someone would be so disrespectful to his friend's own blood and a leader of the tribe.

He turned to make a fiery rebuttal but the words stuck in his throat when he saw the look on his friend's face. He had gone wide-eyed and ghostly white, no longer walking but just standing still and looking off into space. Thomas was about to ask him what was wrong when Fast Elk dropped down to his knees and put the back of one hand onto one of the two steel rails of the train tracks.

"Shit, Thomas." Fast Elk said. "There's a train coming, run!"

As if on cue, the approaching train blew its whistle twice. It was coming around the hillside and would be in sight soon. The two boys ran as quickly as they could toward the opposite end of the train bridge – already knowing that there was no way that they could make it to the other side before the locomotive was on top of them.

Still, Thomas ran. He ran faster than he believed was even possible, dropping his fishing pole and worn rucksack off of the edge of the bridge without a thought. He would leap over two or three railroad ties at a time, grateful to fate for every time his foot landed on the next one, knowing that to miss meant stumbling and losing critical time, or falling off of the bridge altogether. He could hear his friend running and puffing along behind him.

The vibration of the approaching train was at first a barely perceptible tingling which gradually turned into a painful throbbing which worked its way up his legs and into his hips, eventually reverberating through his entire body as the train got closer and closer. He could hear the whistle behind him; he knew the moment that the train had started down the other end of the bridge when the whistle started blowing constantly. The engineer had seen them and locked the brakes with a screech like a thousand sets of fingernails dragging across a thousand chalkboards. But like Thomas, the engineer knew that disaster was inevitable and there was nothing at all that he could do to prevent it.

Even over the din of the train, another realization was slowly beginning to dawn in the mind of the Indian boy, the realization that he was now alone on the bridge.

He gave one quick glance over his should which told him the awful truth. Fast Elk was gone. He had either stumbled (or jumped) off the edge of the bridge at some point over the last minute of running. Thomas had heard no scream; Fast Elk had met his death in total silence. The realization that his friend was gone made Thomas' own scream rise up in his throat, he couldn't hear it though – he could hear nothing over the sound of the approaching steel beast.

The screech was like an awl punching through his skull and drilling into the soft brain tissue beneath. The train was indeed slowing down, otherwise it would have already killed him, but it wasn't slowing down so quickly that he would be allowed to escape, even now with perhaps a hundred feet to go, it sounded like the train was directly on top of him.

Thomas counted his last few steps, his final steps before he went to join his friend. At once a shadow passed over him and he knew that he had only one choice, and that was to jump. He took one final step and leapt at an angle. The train missed him by perhaps a couple inches, he could feet the wake of air created by its passing tear across him, spinning him like a top. He tumbled through the air, looking at the ground which was too far beneath him. The last thing that he remembered was hoping that his trip into the afterlife would be quick and painless.

Gradually awareness had returned to him, and he had no idea how long he had lingered on the cusp between consciousness and unconsciousness. He dreamed the tortured and tormented dreams of the sick, the dreams where you are not quite awake but at the same time not quite asleep. He had visions of Fast Elk's death, he had visions of a talking crow telling him how everyone in his life, and the finally he himself would die. He had visions of a dark shadow falling across the entire Earth.

Without knowing how he had come to be there, or how long it had taken him to return to the world of the living, Thomas Red Deer realized that he was lying on the couch of his grandfather's cabin. The deep red embers of a long-burning wood fire glowed from within the hearth, heating him and banishing the darkness of the nighttime out the windows.

The old man sat beside him. The old man with the long gray hair and craggy face that looked like a stone smashed with a hammer until a spider web of fissures and cracks spread across it. The old man that was his grandfather.

"_Shichoo"_ Thomas said, his voice hoarse and barely louder than a whisper. "Grandfather."

"Rest yourself." The old man said. "The spirits must have some special task in store for you. Your ribs are broken, one of your arms and both of your legs as well. Your injuries should have killed you at least twice over. But it seems that your time in this world is not yet done."

The boy opened his mouth to say something, but nothing at all had come out. He felt his tenuous grasp to consciousness giving way reluctantly. In only a few moments the room had become dark again and he departed back deep within the nether regions of the dream world. He would have plenty of time later to determine the nature of his survival from the train.

"Come on Geronimo, are you going to stand there all day?"

Thomas turned around quickly, startled. He stared at the caustic-sounding woman, not comprehending. For a moment he couldn't recall where he was, or how he came to be standing in the middle of a railroad bridge in New Mexico. He wasn't sure how he came to be in the company of this unpleasant woman instead of his old and long dead friend Fast Elk.

But then slowly it all seemed to come back to him. The jigsaw puzzle of his memory started to reassemble itself; the events of the last month came back and reminded him of what he was doing and where he was going.

"You okay in there, chief?" The woman asked again, the caustic tone in her voice diminished somewhat.

Slowly, Viejo Loco nodded and then turned around and started walking.

"Yeah, I'm fine." he said, "I just…"

He let the words trail away and the woman didn't press him for any more information. He had just what? He wondered.

Had he just had a vision?

He shielded his eyes against the sun and looked up into the sky. A lone crow soared high above them, its wings still and spread out as it rode on the thermal air currents rising up from the floor of the desert. The crow looked back and in his heart, Thomas knew that it was looking at him. And he saw malice in those eyes, even from hundreds of feet away.

Thomas didn't know what had happened to him now or all those many years ago. He was sure though that the only way he would ever find answers would be to keep moving forward, to reach the end of his journey.


	33. Chapter 33 July 16th

**(AN: I'm not a huge fan of author's notes but I wanted to say thank you to everyone that has been reviewing the story, especially to Mark who has written several. I appreciate the effort and hope that you are all enjoying the tale.)**

**I**

The morning was idyllic and pristine, with all of the accouterments that come with a mild summer's day. It was a day that seemed to inspire creativity and yearn for activities and pastimes best suited for immortalization in a Norman Rockwell painting. It was a day that Andrew Verner had made the decision just to get away and spend a little bit of time fishing in the nearby river.

He and Sam had walked to Farmington the day before to get food and water. While they were there, almost as an afterthought, Andy picked up a new fishing pole and some tackle from the Wal-Mart just in case he got bored and decided to try his luck at the nearby creek. It seemed like a good day for it, and besides, it gave him a chance to take his mind off of the anxiety of not knowing what they hell they were going to do next.

Plans had formed in his head, and he was going to have to act on them in the next day or two. But right now he wasn't concerning himself with how to get Floyd and his two broken ankles out of the middle of the forest, he wasn't even concerning himself with the new dreams that were suggesting that it was time to change directions and go to Colorado instead. All he was concerning himself with now was the aforementioned beautiful day, the beautiful river, and the hopes of catching himself a beautiful trout.

The river was a nice hike from the clearing that contained the final resting place of Derek Wilks' Cessna. There was a smaller creek that was close by, but it was foul smelling and contained the corpses of thousands of dead fish. It appeared that some time during the death throes of the plague, an explosion had occurred at a chemical plant further up the river. The event had somehow spilled death into the creek itself, even if there was anything still alive in the water, they wouldn't want to eat it.

The throbbing in his own head had died down considerably. He was pretty sure that he had gotten a mild concussion during the crash five days earlier. It was a situation which had put Samantha into a pretty tight spot; she was the only person that escaped the crash uninjured and she spent the first 72 hours tending to the Floyd and Andy. But yesterday morning Andy had woken up and he felt okay, not great, but at least like a reasonably good facsimile of his previous self.

Things were almost back to normal that day, almost. Lighthearted conversation and laughter had resumed, and with the exception of Floyd, it was business as usual. He shooed them off to go into town and get food and water (and the supplies they would need to drag him out of there when it was time) and just spend some time together; although they both suspected that there was more to it than that, they suspected that Floyd himself wanted a little bit of time to alone.

Andy was in his own private solitude, sitting on a rock and casting a spinner lure into the crystal waters of the Nims River, when someone quietly crept up behind him. The rush of the river masked his assailant's approach effectively, the sound of leaves crackling under footsteps were totally drowned out as outstretched arms reached toward the teenager's back. No sign of the pending attack came at all until two hands covered over his eyes and he felt a body pressing up against him.

"Guess who?" the voice asked, mischievously.

Andy smiled. "Well, since there are only three of us out here and there's no way in hell that you're Floyd…"

Samantha laughed and Andy grabbed hold of one of her arms and pulled her around him until her bottom fell artfully into his lap. Without another word spoken between them, the two pulled each other into a long, probing kiss. They closed their eyes and hugged their bodies tightly together, doing what they always felt too uncomfortable to do with Floyd around. Their hands roamed freely over each other's clothed forms, pressing and rubbing with urgency.

It was Andy that broke away first, a thought coming to his mind.

"Shouldn't somebody be with Floyd right now?" He asked, worried about the older man and his ankles which were the biggest obstacle to them continuing on their way.

"He practically drove me out of camp." Sam remarked with a smile. "He told me to go fishing with you; he said he would be fine. And besides, all he's doing is working on the plane anyway."

Andy's own smile faltered a little bit. Ever since the crash, Floyd had his tool box out working on the plane. It was an exercise in futility, Floyd had to know that. With one wing sheared off and the other bent at an almost right angle; the plane would, quite obviously, never fly again. But he kept working on it, one project after another; yesterday he disassembled and reassembled the brake mechanism on the one good wheel. Today he was tinkering with the other side.

Two possibilities of why this was occurred to Andy. The better of the two options was that Floyd was doing it so he could keep himself busy and not to think too much about what was going on. Andy knew what this was like all too well, it was the same thing that had happened to him right after the plague had broken out and he cleaned his house top to bottom so that he wouldn't have to think about the fact that his mother was in her bedroom dying. Indeed, Andy knew what that was like.

The other option was worse. The other option was that Floyd Wilks was just losing his mind.

"He's going to be okay, Andy." Samantha said, almost as if she were reading his thoughts. "That plane was his son's. He's just really taking it hard that he lost it."

Andy nodded, absent-mindedly stroking the hair of the girl sitting in his lap; the fishing pole dropped beside the rock and forgotten.

"It's been five days now. What if he doesn't get over this?" Andy asked. "What if he's not able to keep going with us…or what if this drives him over the edge and makes him decided to go to _him_ instead?"

"I don't know." Sam said. "We will jump off that bridge when we get to it. But for now I don't think it's a good idea to worry about stuff that might not even happen. Don't you think?'

Andy nodded and smiled. Yes, perhaps there was no point dwelling on what might be. It would assuredly be far more productive to dwell on what is right now.

"So…" He asked finally. "Did you come down here to catch some fish with me or something?"

With both hands, Samantha reached down and lifted her t-shirt up and over her head. The pale white and freckled (and extremely braless) flesh beneath seemed to gleam like ivory in the stark sunlight.

"Or something." She said, leaning in the kiss him again.

After only a few moments, the two of them tumbled down to lie upon the soft grassy slope beside the water. And at least on a temporary basis, Andrew Verner and Samantha Mackenzie left their cares and worries (and Norman Rockwell) behind on the banks of the Nims River in eastern Missouri.

**II**

Floyd, meanwhile, was busying himself with reassembling one of the brake assemblies on the Cessna. His two teenaged traveling companions would have been a little bit relieved to know that the reason for him doing so was, in fact, to keep his mind busy and prevent him from thinking too much about what had happened. They would have been less than relieved to know that Floyd was worrying every bit as much as they were over whether or not he might be starting to lose his mind.

The object of this suspicion was sitting inside the ruined plane, speaking to Floyd through the open door. Floyd had stopped being concerned when his son's shade showed up to talk to him from time to time, even when he was stone-cold sober. Sure it could just be some delusion brought onto him by the trauma of watching his family die, Floyd was no psychologist. But since he didn't know, he settled with not caring; no matter what was making his son appear in his mind, it helped stave off the sadness and loneliness he was feeling.

"Com'on dad." Derek said, watching the older man working. "You know damn well that the crash wasn't your fault. And you know exactly what caused it too, even if you aren't talking about it yet."

Floyd cursed, one of the bolts he was trying to replace kept falling out of alignment just as he attempted to reseat it with the inadequate tools he had with him. Derek sighed above him and climbed out of the plane, picking up the bolt and holding it in place while his dad ratcheted it back into position.

"Why are you even doing this, dad?" Derek asked.

"I need to do something, don't I?" Floyd said, dropping the ratchet back into the toolbox with a loud metallic rattle.

"I suppose…but…" Derek started.

"Then don't bug me about it, boy." Floyd said, cutting him off. "And I know exactly what caused that crash, or at least I'm pretty sure what caused it. It was _him_ wasn't it?"

"The Darkman?" Derek said. "Yeah, I figure it probably was. He doesn't want you getting to Colorado."

"Why?" Floyd asked. Sitting back and facing his son.

Derek just shrugged. "I don't know, you are asking the wrong person there. I suppose that you are dangerous to him somehow and he wants to put you out of the way."

"I'm not dangerous to anybody." Floyd said dismissively.

Derek looked at his father pointedly. "How much napalm did you drop into the jungles of North Vietnam, dad?"

Floyd said nothing, only stared at the tree line.

"Exactly." Derek said. "Given the right conditions, you could be dangerous to anybody if you got your hands on a military aircraft."

"I guess I see your point." Floyd said, starting to put all of the tools back into the rusty metal box. "What does it matter though… how am I supposed to fight somebody who has the power to create a storm to come try to kill me?"

"I don't know, dad" Derek said. "But you are still alive."

"And what does that mean?" Floyd asked.

"It means that even though he tried to kill you, it didn't work. It means that the Darkman isn't infallible. You beat him this time just by surviving; if you beat him once then you can beat him again. Wouldn't you say?" Derek said, grinning.

Floyd shrugged, shaking his head and looking down at his two ankles, both bulky beneath his socks due to the Ace bandages wrapping them.

"Even if I can…" Floyd said. "I can't say that I'm really looking forward to the fight. I've been in a pair of wars myself; I think that I've filled my quota and then some."

"Maybe, but when you aren't the one that starts the war, I don't think that there's really all that much choice in the matter." Derek said. "The Darkman is going to be coming for all of you whether you choose to fight him or not."

"Wow, you are just a fucking ray of sunshine this morning, boy." Floyd said, dourly.

Derek laughed, standing up and examining a minute scratch on the fuselage of the Cessna.

"Hey there!" a voice yelled from back over Floyd's shoulder.

Floyd turned quickly to see someone running across the clearing in his direction. He knew immediately that it wasn't Andy or Sam. It was a man, tall and lanky with a cap of long hair. Floyd quickly turned around to his son, but Derek was no longer there; not that he really expected him to be.

"Holy crap!" The man said. "You weren't in that thing when it crashed, were you?"

The man looked older now that he had gotten closer. With his long hair and scraggly beard and moustache, Floyd at first thought him to be some kind of hippie college student. Now that he was in front of him, it was clear that he probably hadn't been a college student in some time, the man was probably in his forties, late thirties _maybe. _Both his brown hair and his beard showed signs of his advancing years, streaking through them with traces of silver.

"Yeah, I was." Floyd said, smiling. "But it wasn't as bad as it looks. Everyone survived the crash…which makes it a pretty damn successful crash landing."

"I'd say." The man said. "So that means you aren't alone out here?"

Floyd nodded. "Yep. Picked up a couple of teenaged kids when I was flying through Tennessee a little over a week back. They are around here somewhere; I sent both of them off so they will quit feeling like they need to be babysitting for an old man with a couple broken ankles."

"Far out." The man said. "You wouldn't happen to be headed to Colorado would you?"

Floyd only smiled and nodded.

"Awesome, would you mind having one more along for the ride?"

**III**

The sun had raised to its apex by the time that Sam and Andy decided it was time to head back to the clearing and start working on lunch. They had made the decision that it was time to discuss with Floyd their ideas of what to do next. Sam had come up with the idea that they go into town and find themselves a quad, or some other powered vehicle for Floyd to ride so that they wouldn't have to physically drag him out of the forest and back into town. Even a golf cart would work, just as long as they could get back to a town and then find a more dependable long-range means of transportation.

They had reignited their fire to get back onto the road, the dreams had continued to get worse and the only way they could think of to make them stop would be to get to their destination. They didn't think that Floyd would be up to flying and even if he was, Andy was dead-set against getting back into the air again. They hadn't spoken much about what had happened the day of the crash, but both of them were uneasy about the storm that had seemed to dissipate almost as quickly as it had attacked them; the storm that had seemed to have no purpose other than to kill them – and had very nearly been successful.

So without the advantage of having wings to take them to Colorado, they were going to have to use wheels instead. There was a car dealership in Farmington and they figured that if they took it very slow, the two of them would be able to drive the rest of the way even if Floyd couldn't. They would have to sell him on the idea, they both knew, he was going to initially scoff at the idea of the two of them driving him around; but in the end they figured he would go along with their idea.

This was the very thing the two of them were talking about when the returned to the clearing and found Floyd sitting on the surface of the severed wing and talking to a tall bearded man sitting beside him. Both men waved to the teens when they saw them walking in the direction of the Cessna. They were cautious about the man, but Floyd seemed completely at ease with the newcomer, so perhaps he was decent enough.

"Looks like you didn't catch anything." Floyd remarked, pointing to the fishing pole clutched in Andy's hand.

The other man spoke before they had a chance to reply.

"You must be Sam and Andy." He said, smiling at the two and offering his hand out.

Both of them shook it numbly, still a little bit taken aback at the appearance of only the second new living person they had come across since the plague settled down to smolder.

"Pleased to meet you both." The man said. "My name is Ted Frampton."

After the initial shock had worn off, Sam and Andy started working on making lunch; not very much – just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with slightly stale potato chips. Ted accepted their offer of lunch and thanked them graciously for the food. They ate in silence for a few minutes before Ted began telling them about whom he was and where he had come from.

It turned out that Ted Frampton lived not more than twenty or thirty miles from Floyd. He had even gone to Kent State University, only a stone's throw from the airport where Floyd had kept his own stunt plane and had departed Ohio in his son's plane only a couple weeks earlier. He was also dreaming of Mother Abigail and following her directions to turn away from the road to Nebraska and instead head to Boulder, Colorado.

He was a single man with no family of note, and seemed to live life under the philosophy of "No Sweat." No matter what was going on in the world, "No Sweat." No matter how many people are dead or how much the world is screwing you over, "No Sweat." If life gives you lemons, you make yourself some lemonade and most of all…"No Sweat."

He didn't seem to be in a big hurry to get anywhere, which accounted for why it had taken him so long to get as far as the middle of Missouri. He mostly either walked or rode a bike, sometimes spending days at a time not going anywhere at all. He would turn off the road on a whim to go on some minor sightseeing diversion. In fact, it seemed that his only reason for going anywhere was just out of sheer boredom.

"What did you do before the plague, Mr. Frampton?" Samantha had asked.

"I was a high school guidance counselor." He said. "Ellet High School in Akron, Ohio. But I got tired of that, I got sick of seeing kids throwing their lives away and not caring about the future. So one day I just up and quit, I was living off the savings I had built up and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life when the plague hit. Somehow I guess I just ended up here."

"And did you decide what you were going to do with your life?" Andy asked, finding irony in this man criticizing others for their future goals when he himself seemed to have none.

"Well, I'm headed to Colorado it looks like." Ted said vaguely. "I guess everything else will just drop into place."

"Floyd." Andy said, putting aside his paper plate with the last crumbs of his lunch on them. "Sam and I have been talking, and we think we have come up with an idea on how we are going to get out of here and get back on the road."

"Well then start talking." Floyd said, smiling.


	34. Chapter 34 July 19th

Claudia's gloved hand tightened around the throttle of the motorcycle

**(AN: Very, very sorry that it has taken me so long to post this update. This chapter has smacked me around for a month. Once I get to boulder I will be back into the swing of things, but the story of getting there has been a nightmare to me.)**

Claudia's gloved hand tightened around the throttle of the motorcycle. She gave it a couple twists, listening to the highly-tuned engine beneath her sing, not the deep throaty rumble of an American-made Harley-Davidson, but the banshee howl of a Japanese import. It was a sound like a million angry wasps preparing for the kill, each twitch of the throttle forcing gasoline into the combustion chamber and erupting into a symphony of fire and smoke.

The black paint of the Suzuki rice rocket she was perched on gleamed like a dark diamond in the noonday sunlight. It was obvious that its previous owner treated it with a care and reverence that must have bordered on sheer idolatry. She smiled beneath the mirrored anonymity of her helmet's visor, feeling the barely controlled thunder of the engine pulsating and thrumming under her.

She turned for a moment to look at the man atop the motorcycle beside her. An entirely different but formidable Ducati motorcycle beneath him. He either did not, or pretended not to notice her, his own concentration focused on the man standing on the curb of the winding suburban Arkansas street that this race was taking place on, a flag in his hand about to start the game into play.

Claudia was almost taken off-guard when the flag suddenly came down. She gave the throttle a hard twist, the motorcycle lurching forward at a seemingly impossible rate of acceleration. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Santiago's motorcycle lifted onto its' rear wheel for several seconds under the power of the break-neck acceleration.

A mile down the road was the finish line, a distance that would be traveled in only a handful of seconds. Claudia knew pretty much from the beginning that she was out-classed; she had been riding motorcycles since she was a kid and thought that she was a pretty formidable opponent. Only after the race had begun did she realize that Santiago was not only better than she was, but that he was actually going easy on her to make the race closer than it would otherwise have been. She watched in shock as he rounded a turn full-throttle, a turn that she thought there was no way he would be able to navigate, yet he leaned the bike into the turn with his knee almost touching the pavement. His riding was so stunningly fluid that it seemed more like art than an applied skill.

When they crossed the finish line surrounded by its gathered spectators, it wasn't even close.

By the time she had killed the engine and removed her helmet, Raul Santiago was already standing next to her bike. He was late middle aged, his dusky Columbian skin weathered from a lifetime sun damage and hard living; though right now his easy laugh lines showed on his face as it was crack into a smile.

"Pretty good riding, Donaldson." He said, his gloved hand held out to his competitor.

"Pretty good for getting my ass handed to me." Claudia said, taking Santiago's hand and shaking it. "Where in the hell did you learn to ride like that?"

Santiago just shrugged off the question. "I don't know. It's always just been a hobby of mine. Never did it professionally, just like getting on a bike whenever I can spare the time."

The shouts and whoops of the rest of their caravan made it sound every bit like a real sporting event had just taken place. The only holdout was Mason Hale, who instead of showing excitement, was leaning up against the tree scowling at her disapprovingly.

"What happens if one of you get hurt?" He had asked. "There's no doctor here, no hospital I can take you to and get you patched up if your ass goes flying over the handlebars of that thing."

It was definitely going to take some time to patch things up there, but he was going to have to understand that she had no intention of living her life afraid of what would happen if she got a bump on the head. Life was important to just live, she didn't see the point of being one of the Superflu's survivors if she wasn't willing to throw caution to the wind from time to time and actually have fun.

"What are we supposed to do, Mason?" She had asked him. "Spend the rest of our lives being afraid that everything we do might be the end of us?"

He was concerned and worried about her. Part of her considered that taking risks with her own life was a little bit unfair. Mason had lost everyone that was close to him, they both had. Wasn't it a little bit unreasonable to jeopardize the closeness that they had forged together by risking injury or death over something as trivial as a motorcycle race?

Claudia pushed that question away. She had no interest in second-guessing herself or her decisions. She could afford that less than ever.

They were making some pretty good time and they decided that they would take a couple days break before making what they hoped would be their final push across Oklahoma, Missouri and into Colorado. It seemed that as they grew they attracted more and more survivors, there were now almost twenty-five of them and they rarely had a day that they didn't draw one or two new people into their fold.

Claudia still somehow found herself in the unlikely position of the group's leader. She didn't particularly understand how that had happened, it certainly wasn't through any encouragement on her part – she had no interest in being in charge any more than she had interest in being in the Marine Corp. Yet there she was, she was the person that everyone looked up to whenever the question was asked "What do we do next?"

She never would have considered herself a leader a couple months ago. She was a grunt; that was her job. She had never been interested in telling other people what to do aside from the marginal authorities given to her by a rather low rank in the Marines. Yet here she was, being looked up to by a couple dozen traumatized men, woman and children that saw her as their best chance in getting to the place God, or at least one supernatural old black lady, had wanted them to go.

"You said a couple days of rest, that's fine and all." Santiago said, his voice turning serious and bringing Claudia out of her silent contemplation. "But we need to get on the move again tomorrow. What do you have planned for us? Is it back to the county road, or are we going to give the interstate a try?"

"No, we are definitely going to stay on the back roads as long as we can." Claudia said. "I don't want to run into any more trouble, and even though it takes a little longer I would rather stay to the safer areas if we can."

Santiago nodded his assent. Two days ago they had stumbled across four men who were on their way to Las Vegas while they made a brief foray to the interstate just on the other side of the state line. The encounter was quick and dangerous and had probably cemented Claudia's authority as the head of the group into the heads of the few that might not have been a hundred percent certain of her ability to lead them.

It had come down the shoulder of the clogged concrete artery of the national transportation system. A black military Humvee with a single man protruding from the top and manning a machine gun post. It was an image that was probably better suited to a South American banana republic than it was to the heartland of the United States, but such was the state of the world.

A man jumped out of the passenger seat and onto the surface of the road before the vehicle had even come to a complete stop. He looked young, certainly younger than Claudia though he should look for a man wearing the insignia of a lieutenant on his uniform. She pegged him as thirty, maybe even a few years younger than that.

"Who is in charge here?" he asked, speaking to nobody in particular as his vehicle and the other three men inside it came to a halt beside him.

"I am." Claudia said, her voice sounding a little less friendly to her ears than she had intended it to be. "What can we do for you, lieutenant?"

The man smiled at her, the brief and patronizing smile she had come to associate with military officers who are about to tell you something that you don't want to hear.

"The seat of the United States government is rebuilding itself in Las Vegas. I have been given the mandate to collect survivors and bring them back to the resettlement that has been started there."

Someone behind Claudia started laughing and many more started to whisper among themselves. The man looked sincere, sincere and zealous – so very much so that at first Claudia was at a complete loss for words as how to respond to his statement.

"We aren't going to Las Vegas." The deaf girl, Jennifer Aikins mumbled beside her. She looked diminutive and shy in the face of the soldier, but her eyes were fiery and resolute. It wasn't the first time she had been outspoken like this, over the last few days she was growing to display a fervor toward not just Mother Abigail and Colorado, but the _idea_ of Mother Abigail and Colorado that was beginning to stun quite a few people, Neil included.

"Shut up kid." The solder said. "The adults are talking."

"We aren't going to Las Vegas." Claudia said, staring at the lieutenant in front of her.

The lieutenant's first reaction seemed one of boyish puzzlement. Whatever reaction he was expecting from the group assembled around him, he wasn't getting it. The men on the Humvee behind him shifted around uncomfortably.

"You don't understand." He said, smiling again. "I was given an order by the new president of the United States to bring survivors to him. He appeared to me in a dream and insisted that all surviving American be brought before him in Nevada…"

"You said you dreamed of this 'new president of the United States?'" Claudia asked.

"Well yes, and he said…" The lieutenant started.

"Why do you think that he's the President?" Claudia asked. "And why do you think that he would want everyone to follow you there?"

"I don't know, he just…" The man said, seeming less sure of himself all the time.

"It doesn't matter." Claudia interrupted him. "We aren't going to Las Vegas. We are going to Colorado. If you want to join us then you are more than welcome to, but if you decide that you are going to Las Vegas, then you are going to do it yourself."

The lieutenant seemed visibly shaken and shocked for a moment, but then is face regained the stony visage that he had when he first jumped out of the vehicle.

"You aren't understanding." He said. "I'm not asking you all to go; I'm telling you all that you are going. Martial law was declared and I have the full right and authority to shoot any one of you for treason if you fail to obey the orders of your government."

"It's not my government." Mason Hale said, beside her. "Not anymore. We aren't going anywhere against our will."

The lieutenant said nothing to Mason, but instead turned to the man atop the Humvee. "Sergeant Huxley, shoot that man."

Mason didn't even flinch, and neither did Claudia for that matter.

What happened afterward appeared to be in slow motion. Guns were drawn all around them. Mason, Claudia, Santiago, Neil. Keith and Angela stood ramrod straight, standing side by side with twin revolvers in their hands. Even Monika Sellers, whom Claudia was fairly sure would never harm a fly, had her steely eyes on one of the soldiers in the back seat, a terrifying cannon of a handgun in her hands.

Her entire group of survivors had galvanized in a way that she neither expected nor understood. But regardless of the reasons, they had non-verbally all made their intentions known their would-be messiah that intended to take them to the dubious safety of the western Nevada desert. They had no intention of being ordered around by a pawn of a dead government that through some trickery had become the pawn of the Darkman.

The soldiers in the jeep made no move at all, even after the command of the lieutenant. They all seemed to understand the direction that this would go even from the beginning. The man at the machine gun calmly stepped back away from his weapon and raised his hands, his face passive toward Santiago who currently had a Desert Eagle pointed at his forehead. The only person that was speaking at all was the lieutenant whose face looked angry and apoplectic at the seeming refusal of his soldiers to do his bidding.

"I said shoot him!" he shouted, reaching down to free his own gun from its holster. "Shoot..!"

His shout was cut off by Mason who smacked the man in the face with the butt of his own handgun. The lieutenant dropped the ground like a sack of potatoes; thankfully silent and nonmoving. The crisis had been averted in a way that showed not only Claudia but her entire group that they were capable of not only being together, but also of working together.

None of them knew what to make of the encounter. Claudia had the suspicion that the Darkman might be sending his less-capable recruits around with the intention of misdirecting or possibly killing those that were not going to him. The lieutenant was never a real threat; he had to have known that. But maybe that was the point, maybe the adversary was willing to engage in a war of attrition, using small irritants to wear them down the point that he could make a real attack that they weren't waiting for.

They had sent the lieutenant on his way, alone (the rest of his soldiers decided that going to Colorado suited them better) and unarmed. They had made it through that particular trial unscathed, but it had made Claudia much more cautious about every person that approached the group, she insisted on knowing what their intentions where and where they were headed before another work was spoken.

"If we got onto a clear interstate, if such a think still exists, we could be sipping the cervezas in Boulder less than a week from now. You know that?" Santiago asked, eyeing her shrewdly. Most of the others had walked off, engaged in their own conversations or just otherwise enjoying themselves on the rare day off from their travels.

"I know that." Claudia said, smiling. "But all the same, I'd like to get there with as many of our asses intact as we can manage."

Santiago shrugged, scratching his graying beard and grinning. "Whatever, you're the boss-lady."

"I'm the boss lady?" Claudia asked, raising her eyebrows.

"You're the boss lady." The Columbian man repeated.

"Good." Claudia said. "Then get your ass back on that motorcycle and show me how you beat me so bad."


	35. update

Thank you for everyone that reads this story

Thank you for everyone that reads this story. This is not an update, I'm sorry to say, but I have realized that it has been way too long since I've last updated this story. I have a lot of people constantly telling me that I need to keep writing this and I PROMISE that I am going to finish this story.

The problem currently is that I'm working on my first novel and between dealing with finding a literary agent and editing my final manuscript, I have been absolutely buried in work lately. I beg patience on the part of all my readers in knowing that I haven't forgotten about this story and it will be finished, but when it comes down to writing that I'm getting paid for versus writing I'm not getting paid for….hey, I have to make a living.

I will update very soon.


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